To be kissed on the lips by your husband is the most decadent thing.
Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you? So that’s how the hating first began. I’ve thought about this a lot, and that’s where it started, I think.
I felt something loosen in me, that shouldn’t have loosened. A stitch come undone.
There was nothing I wanted to do more than be unconscious again, wrapped in black, gone away. I was raw. I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst. Begging for a pin prick.
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.
It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.
It’s a very female thing, isn’t it, to take one boys’ night and snowball it into a marital infidelity that will destroy our marriage?
I’m in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn’t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn’t that the simple magic phrase?
Sometimes he felt like he’d been gone his whole life – in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he’d never been.
Glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.
I am not okay. I will be okay, but right now I am not okay. I want my husband to put his arms around me, to console me, to baby me a little bit. Just for a second.
Compromise, communicate, and never go to bed angry – the three pieces of advice gifted and regifted to all newlyweds.
You’re sexist. I’m so sick of liberal lefty men practicing sexual discrimination under the guide of protecting women against sexual discrimination.
I have a meanness inside of me, real as an organ.
I’m tired of dying.
Unconditional love is an undisciplined love and, as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous.
Do you ever feel like bad things are going to happen, and you can’t stop them? You can’t do anything, you just have to wait?
He’s calling you a Cool Girl to fool you! That’s what men do: they try to make it sound like you are the cool girl so you will bow to their wishes. Like a car salesman saying, how much do you want to pay for this beauty? When you didn’t agree to buy it yet.
Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the announcement of the word as you sift your brain to see if you can spell it? It was like that, the blank panic.
I knew I liked her then, really liked her, this girl with an explanation for everything.