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“How then, in the time that followed, did I become someone I didn't know?”
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“I don’t want to be superior to anyone for being afraid. We already have a culture built on that.”
― Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
― Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
“Not so long ago, on a trip to Morrison’s Cafeteria, she talked incessantly for the full twenty-minute drive. I blew up and told her it was wrong to keep a running monologue, selfish not to leave any space for my response. Her face went red, as if I’d seen right into her liver and heart. She knew what I saw: someone who had lost her friends, someone who told them her secrets, and thus she withdrew, or they from her, as if direct talk about, say, her dead twin brother or her gay son named after him were too much for anybody to take.
I cannot be her husband. She must know I can’t accompany her to Home Depot forever, pour shock into the hot tub, fertilize bougainvillea by the downspout. But does she say she can take care of herself on her own? That would be expecting too much. She puts her arms around me so I will feel the consequence in my body, the consequence of her losing once again. And I hug her back even harder in my attempt to do the impossible: push dark feelings out of her and leave light in their place. Maybe she thinks, Why should he get all the freedom I don’t have? Go to grad school, come back home, go off for a fellowship.
Why should his happiness spring from, depend upon, my disappointment?
What kind of logic is that?
Do you think I’m going to die, Mom? Is that why you’re sad?”
― Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
I cannot be her husband. She must know I can’t accompany her to Home Depot forever, pour shock into the hot tub, fertilize bougainvillea by the downspout. But does she say she can take care of herself on her own? That would be expecting too much. She puts her arms around me so I will feel the consequence in my body, the consequence of her losing once again. And I hug her back even harder in my attempt to do the impossible: push dark feelings out of her and leave light in their place. Maybe she thinks, Why should he get all the freedom I don’t have? Go to grad school, come back home, go off for a fellowship.
Why should his happiness spring from, depend upon, my disappointment?
What kind of logic is that?
Do you think I’m going to die, Mom? Is that why you’re sad?”
― Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
“How do we even talk about the future when there’s less and less of it every minute?”
― Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids
― Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids
“They weren’t exactly here and now. They were busy turning to some future, but what is the future when you are always feeding it money? Doesn’t it get tiring to give so much away to a world that you’ll never get to touch and see?”
― Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids
― Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on The Decision Not To Have Kids
