“I want to tell her that I’m scared I’m too wore out, worn down, that this constant anxious ache that I have now isn’t about my job or kids or all the ways life isn’t what it should be, that maybe it’s just me, it’s most of who I am. That I loved so much believing that there was such a thing as fixing, getting better. That knowing that’s not true, that it’s all just more of the same, exhausts me more than all those nights that I can’t sleep, the miles that I run.”
― Want
― Want
“We are very good at desperate emails tinged with self-destruction. Hers are more active, more interactive. We have lives that look concretely, wholly separate, lives that, if one were to track back to the causes, to the feelings and the thinking, might feel largely the same. My depression is the flattest; it’s so boring; it’s all inward—in books, at least, as well as in her emails, the characters all do things. They have too much sex; they drink; they travel and their lives at least are filled with stories that they might tell later when they’re older and they’re better, when they’re the grown-up versions of these unformed, reckless things. I envy her these stories, their shape and texture, the concreteness of her self-destruction. She is looked at, and because she’s looked at, she lives her anger and her sadness out loud and people see; I disappear and so slip down and under. I, sporadically, quite violently, try to be seen and am then further knocked down by how completely that effort fails.”
― Want
― Want
“My whole life, I’ll be better at this type of friendship and feel guilty for it; I like being needed, giving, but not so close that I can’t run away.”
― Want
― Want
“Time passing is the only truth I believe in anymore.”
― Want
― Want
Skokie Public Library
— 101 members
— last activity Apr 10, 2023 08:50AM
This was the online book club for Skokie Public Library from 2020-2023!
Niswat’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Niswat’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Polls voted on by Niswat
Lists liked by Niswat



















































