Laughing in the Dark (214-295)

     Gaines needed to get her life back on track. To make this happen she had to do what ws best for herself and her child. In so the first step was divorcing Ziggy. Once Gainesd did this life kept getting better. Gaines ws getting raises at her new job at the Post, was making new positive friends, and enjoying time with her daughter.
      Then people started dieing and getting sick. Gaines's grandmother had 3-4 strokes and died. A few months before her grandfather died. Then so did her father just as their relationship started to become the best than it had ever been. Soon some of her gay friends who helped her emotionally in life were getting sicker from aids. Four of them died from it and slowly led Gaines back into depression. Life had become so great and then the people who helped make it that way slowly slipped away. This was effecting her work and Gaines was in jepordey of loosing her job. So in noticing that she was the most unhappy that she had been in a while she took a vacation. Then she woke up one day and relized that all the great people in her life that had passed di not want this for her and she knew that they were in a better place.
     After all of this happened Gaines met Chris who she believe that her friends some how sent to her from the heveans above. Over this difficult but love filled year Gaines learned so much met knew people, and finally learned how to love herself. In this being so Gaines relized that her time before this she could categorized summerized and put behind her and focous one the good and live off of that. This is when Gaines wrote, "... my life thus far could be broken into three parts: there was my childhood, when I learned that I was black and struggled to understand what that meant; there was my my young adult life, when I searched for the definition of a woman and what my relationship should be to a man; and there was this time, the exciting time, when I had gone beyound sexuality, beyond woman and man, to humanness" (Gaines 273). With this thought being reached Gaines had accepted herself, was writting a book, helping people in situations of which she use to be in, and marring someone she truley loved and became friends with before an intimate partner of which she believed made the relationship stronger. So now there is only so much more that could be reached because her understanding of life was learned and relized that it didnt have to be miseerable.