Mandy

“I thought he understood me. I thought he accepted the vulnerability I battled to show him, I thought we were closer for it, but instead of comprehending the complexity of how I felt—and the difficulty of contradictory feelings—he judged me, misunderstood me, and is now using it against me.”
― Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore

“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
― Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore

“think my husband loved me as a vessel. Not consciously, I don’t think so little of him that I believe he could be conscious of this. But somewhere deep within. A buried truth in the darkness. He never took the time to discover my body, he never explored it for what it could offer aside from the obvious, he never found in me, in my essence, a purpose other than to carry children, and when I admitted I couldn’t do this for him he turned away from me. He had no more use for my limbs or my skin, my muscles or tongue or fingertips. He couldn’t even see me anymore, my flesh. I’m not sure that such a turning away could exist in the same body as love. I’m not sure it’s possible to make so small a thing of love. I think love expands when it needs to, it adapts, it embraces.”
― Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore

“He wonders if this is what he is, all that he is, a leaf battered by one wind or the other.”
― Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore