“and alice, i do feel like a failure, and in a way my life really is nothing, and very few people care what happens in it. it's so hard to see the point sometimes, when the things in life i think are meaningful turn out to mean nothing, and the people who are supposed to love me don't ... maybe certain kinds of pain, at certain formative stages in life, just impress themselves into a person's sense of self permanently ... and now i just feel like the kind of person whose life partner would fall out of live with them after several years, and i can't find a way not to be that kind of person anymore.”