I’ve suffered betrayal with all five senses. For over a year.
She released her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and they are gone.
And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don’t have genuine souls.
Nick is like a good stiff drink: He gives everything the correct perspective.
I don’t understand the point of being together if you’re not the happiest.
Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.
Everyone who keeps a secret, itches to tell it.
There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child – you grow up knowing you aren’t allowed to disappoint, you’re not even allowed to die. There isn’t a replacement toddling around; you’re it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.
I’m here, I said, and it felt shockingly comforting, those words. When I’m panicked, I say them aloud to myself. I’m here. I don’t usually feel that I am. I feel like a warm gust of wind could exhale my way and I’d be disappeared forever, not even a sliver of fingernail left behind. On some days, I find this thought calming; on others it chills me.
Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment – at least one moment – when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name?
I lack formal education. So I’m left with the feeling that I’m smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people – people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin – that they’d be bored as hell by me. It’s a lonely way to go through life.
How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow.
Money is wasted on the rich.
I like checking days off a calendar – 151 days crossed and nothing truly horrible has happened. 152 and the world isn’t ruined. 153 and I haven’t destroyed anyone. 154 and no one really hates me. Sometimes I think I won’t ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand. Three more days to get through until I don’t have to worry about life anymore.
People are dumb. I’ll never get over how dumb people are.
Empathetic silence is one of the most underused weapons in the world.
Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That’s murder.
I’m not good at things like that: haircuts or oil changes or dentist visits. When I moved into my bungalow, I spent the first three months swaddled in blankets because I couldn’t deal with getting the gas turned on. It’s been turned off three times in the past few years, because sometimes I can’t quite bring myself to write a check. I have trouble maintaining.
I’m not really a nerd; I only aspire to be one.
Feeling sad means having too much time on your hands, usually. Really. I’m not a licensed therapist but usually it means too much time.