Riyah > Recent Status Updates

I LOVE ISA I can see why people are intrigued by her aura and love her inner thoughts as she entertains men like Tuzy.

Though we give the appearance of it, I wonder when we were last truly carefree. It's an impalpable thing to always chase. I've felt it in small, delicious fragments, when I'm dancing. The only way to achieve even the veneer of such freedom is to resist being pulled down by the weight of everything.

People think girls who have certain magnetism have never known Real Struggle, so they take it upon themselves to give a little bruising.They think we should always be learning Life Lessons. I said outright, "If I took myself as seriously as you take me, I may consider being hurt."I am highly educated in true sorrow, so I don't succumb to silly criticism. In no way am I going to be shocked by someone's ideas about me.

“It's just that turning a night into some form of romance takes us out of ourselves. It's a chance to see who we are through the eyes of someone who doesn't really know us.“

We look much different from when we were sixteen. It really depresses me. The plumpness in our faces has gone, and something around our eyes has changed; the brightness has dimmed.

When we were younger, everything for the first time always felt the best, or at least the Most, and sometimes getting older feels like striking the same chord and it sounding different.

They miss each other and love each other so intensely and she has moved her whole life for him and he didn’t show up and she’s also pregnant oh my fucking god what is happening all of a sudden what is this miscommunication mess!?!?

“The sun dries my skin. It feels polished and alive. He comes out of the water and stands beside me. He takes my hand and I feel relieved. I press my lips to his neck and hold him close and more water from his hair drips down my back and shoulders and my skin tightens as it evaporates. I tell him I love him with my whole heart.
…
He shakes his head. 'It just hurts a little, to feel this good.”

They are happy and in love, I am happy to witness this. Being 22 making decisions in youth is intense enough, learning about each other, spending all this time intertwined together, everything is funny and you don’t want to miss anything the other says. And saying goodbye/long distance is hard, I do love the term babe and the intimacy felt like they are breathing from the same body and being understood aahhh

Two besties being broke and chaotic in NYC I’m sat! Trying to be adults but also having fun yay

“It is difficult to explain the euphoria I experience when I go dancing. It is kind of like breathlessness or hypnosis.
You can be absolutely nothing if you want to be. That can be terrifying, especially if you're always trying to be something or somebody. But for me, dancing is the time I feel most carefree.“

I read the Italy chapter a year ago and I absolutely loved it I wanted to be her in Italy living la dolce vita, it still is my dream to travel all over Italy in the future
I started reading the India chapter and it just isn’t doing the same for me as instead of meditative it feels repetitive even though it’s my ethic background and culture, however still not a place I have visited either

The tragedies in my life have been of a personal and largely self-created nature, not epically oppres-sive. I went through a divorce and a depression, I had a crisis of identity, but I also had the resources with which to try to work it out. Still, I will say that the same thing - the idea that the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity.

“It was gorgeous and tender. Everything in it is working toward this mood, this ache, this very tactile sensation that gets deep in your bones. He sort of reminded me of you."
Of me? That loser? How does he remind you of me?'
Because I'm a little in love with him. Because he moves me. I can't think of anything true that I could say out loud.”

ITS ABOUT BEING A WRITER NO MATTER THE COST

'I don't think I could live without a belief in moral progress. I can't feed myself lies. There's a lot of beauty along with pity & fear, as Aristotle said, in it all.
Our famed condition.'
'Is that what life is to you, a tragedy?'
'Ofcourse it's a tragedy. A very silly one. The absurdity is as great as the despair' No room for hope?'
'Not much.'
I wouldn't want to live without hope.'
'Well, I do. I like it here.'

“How can you say that? All of literature rests on the promise that we change, we grow, have epiphanies, become better, understand our flaws.'
'Too late. Have you ever noticed that? It's always too late. Oedipus, Macbeth, Raskolnikov.
'For them. But not for us. We have gotten better.
Ethically. Morally?
'We haven't. Human behavior doesn't change' He is so certain of this.”

I REALLY LIKE YASH AND I AM EXCITED FOR THEM TO SPEND THE SUMMER TERM? AND HAVE A THEIR FAREWELL TO YOUTH TOGETHER I MISS UNI AWH

“We get teas at the cafeteria and sit on the steps in the sun. I have this feeling that this is how all of college should have been and somehow wasn't, sitting with Yash on the steps of the quad. I have a stab of sadness, then I remember.”

“That night I lie in my sleeping bag and feel sad that he can't be my friend now. I'm aware that I had ideas about the future that I hadn't discussed with myself. I figured Sam and I would go on separate paths after graduation, but I hoped Yash and I would stay friends, that we'd be friends for life. Now that seems a lot less likely. And this is the thing I'm most sad about.”

“He points out his dorm from freshman year and I point out mine the next quad over. The movie has made these buildings, these quads, these years of our lives seem unbearably naïve. I want to say something about it, but that feels naïve, too.“

“There are days when I cannot bear it, days when he says it feels like nothing has changed, and days when it feels to both of us like so much has been lost it is beyond repair. But we are together in, Patrick says, injury time - time we are not entitled to - and so we are grateful. He has started referring to the studio as the Hotel Olympia.”
But I have hope, and either way, Patrick is always just there

“I told her she was right - the things she had said on the phone and in her letter. I have been loved every day of my adult life. I have been unbearable but I have never been unloved. I have felt alone but I have never been alone and I've been forgiven for the unforgiveable things I have done.”

The sensation of being somewhere I had been vigorously discouraged from entering for most of my life was still strange.
Martha. I know you and your sister tease me for the repurposing but all I've been trying to do, all these years, is take rubbish and turn it into something beautiful and much stronger than it was before. I can't help if it's a bloody metaphor for everything. She turned and dragged off the sheet.

“You thought it was the right thing to do. You thought it was best for her, even though you wanted her so much. That's how I know -' he said, maybe this isn't helpful
- but that's how I know you were supposed to be a mother. You put her above yourself. That's what mothers do, isn't it?' He said obviously, I'm only guessing.”

AND THEN THEY BOTH CRIED AWH THIS IS ALL JUST SUCH A BIG PITY

DIDN’T EXPECT TO BE HAPPY A MAN READ A WOMANS JOURNAL BUT THIS WAS NEEDED

“Most of the time it was amazing.
You made me so happy, Martha. You have no idea. You have no idea how good it was. That's the part I'm finding hardest to deal with. That you were oblivious to everything that was good about it. You couldn't see it.'
I told Patrick I could now.”

You constantly accused me of being passive & not wanting anything but I wasn't allowed to. That's how it worked. Accepting whatever I got was the only way to keep the peace.

I'm the worst person in world. No you're not.'You're not the best person in the world either, which is what you really think. You're the same as everybody else. But that's harder for you, isn't it.The idea you might be ordinary is unbearable.'

Even the person, a man who wrote speeches about me, and gave things up for me, who sat beside the bed for hours while I was crying or unconscious, who said he'd never change his mind about me and stayed even after he knew I was lying to him, who only hurt me as much as I deserved, who put oil in the car and would never have left me if I hadn't told him to.

SHE DESPERATELY WANTS HIM BACK
WHAT DID SHE WRITE THO?!

I'd find in my writing - self-fascination, banality, descriptions of things - would make me go outside and set it on fire.
It wasn't that or, at least, I saw shame and hope and grief, guilt and love, sorrow and bliss, kitchens, sisters and mothers, joy, fear, rain, Christmas, gardens, sex and sleep and presence and absence, the parties. Patrick's goodness. My striking unlikeability and attention-seeking punctuation.

But they all said, a person, a family, a home, money, to not be alone.
That is all anybody wants.

“Everything goes away eventually, and women are always the last ones standing so we just make up something else to want.'
'I don't want it to be an invented thing?
Everything is invented. Life is invented. Everything you see anyone doing is something they made up. I invented Swindon for fuck's sake, and made myself want it and now I do.”

“He had been going to say, No doubt my wife will correct me later and insist it was just for the open bar, but we are all here for the love of this uncommon, beautiful, maddening woman - who does not, in my opinion, look a day over thirty-nine and twelve months. He was going to say, 'I wish it wasn't the case, but everyone knows Martha is the only thing I’ve ever wanted in my life”
I’m so sad this is so sweet

“Martha, when you are in a room, nobody wants to talk to anybody else.
And you have been loved for all your adult life by one man. That is a gift not many people get, and his stubborn, persistent love isn't in spite of you and your pain. It is because of who you are which is, in part, a product of your pain. You do not have to believe me about that but I know that your pain has made you brave enough to carry on.”

'He's never felt the way I have. He has no idea what it's like.' Maybe so but he's had to watch you. He's had to hear his wife say she wants to die, see her in agony & not know how to help
her. Imagine that. And you thinking he liked it that way! He stayed with you through it all, no matter the cost to himself, and in the end he is hated for it and told to go?'

I MISS PATRICK I CAN’T BELIVE I AM ON A MANS SIDE UGH

“You think all this has happened to you and only you. That's what I saw yesterday.
It's your terrible personal tragedy, so you're the only one who's allowed to be in pain. 'But -' she said, my girl - this has happened to all of us. Do you not see that? This is everyone's tragedy. And if he'd been there, you would have seen it's most of all Patrick's. This has been his life every bit as much as it's been yours.”