Michael Ruffenach

“Earthquakes just happen. Tornadoes just happen. Your tongue does not just happen to fall into some other girls mouth!”
― Gemma Halliday, Deadly Cool

“I called to tell her I loved her, which was smart, because if I’d have done it in person, I’d have caught her with another man. I don’t care if he was my clone, it isn’t right and it pisses me off. I was backstabbed by myself.
”
― Jarod Kintz, At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.

“livid, adj.

Fuck You for cheating on me. Fuck you for reducing it to the word cheating. As if this were a card game, and you sneaked a look at my hand. Who came up with the term cheating, anyway? A cheater, I imagine. Someone who thought liar was too harsh. Someone who thought devastator was too emotional. The same person who thought, oops, he’d gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Fuck you. This isn’t about slipping yourself an extra twenty dollars of Monopoly money. These are our lives. You went and broke our lives. You are so much worse than a cheater. You killed something. And you killed it when its back was turned.”
― David Levithan, The Lover's Dictionary

“How could you do that to me?" I repeat. I don´t have to itemize. He knows what I speak of.
Eventually N produces three answers, in this order:

1. "Because I am a complete rotter." I silently agree, but it´s a cop-out: I have maggots, therefore I am dead.
2. "I was stressed at work and unhappy and we were always fighting...and you know I was just crazy..."

I cut him off, saying, "You don´t get to be crazy. You did exactly what you chose to do."
Which is true, he did. It is what he has always done. He therefore seems slightly puzzled at the need for further diagnosis, which may explain his third response:

3. "I don´t know."

This, I feel instinctively, is the correct answer. How can I stay angry with him for being what he is? I was, after all, his wife, and I chose him. No coincidences, that´s what Freud said. None. Ever.
I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and walk toward the truck, saying to his general direction, "Fine. At least now I know: You don´t know."
I stop and turn around and fire one more question: a bullet demanding attention in the moment it enters the skin and spreads outward, an important bullet that must be acknowledged.
"What did you feel?"
After a lengthy pause, he answers. "I felt nothing."
And that, I realize too late, was not the whole truth, but was a valid part of the truth.
Oh, and welcome to the Serengeti. That too.”
― Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce