Status Updates From Thanks for the Memories

“I don’t think you’re thinking of the alternative. Would you rather I kept my promise to spend the rest of my life with Conor, but not love him and be unhappy?

If you think your mother and I had a perfect marriage then you’re wrong because there’s no such thing. No one’s happy all the time, love.

I understand that, but what if you’re never happy. Ever.”

“But you married him, Joyce. Didn’t I bring you down the aisle myself?

You both promised each other in the house of our Lord, I heard you myself with my own ears. What is it with you young people these days, breaking up and remarrying all the time? What happened to keeping promises?”

“Marrying a nice man gives you a nice marriage but never anything more. And nice is OK when it’s among other things but never when it stands alone.”

“He liked to remind himself that his entire world hadn’t fallen apart. Sometimes we need all the glue we can get, just to hold ourselves together.”

“I look in the mirror and see this medium average person. A little tired, a little sad, but not falling apart.”

“Yet the mirror told me this: you can’t know everything by looking at me. You can never know by looking at someone.”

“There is something unnerving about being forced to look at yourself when you are unwilling to come to terms with something. Something raw and real that you can’t run away from. You can lie to yourself, to your mind and in your mind all of the time but when you look yourself in the face, well, you know that you’re lying. I am not OK. That, I did not hide from myself, and the truth of it stared me in the face”