Debbie Roth > Recent Status Updates

“Are you okay? Do have like a shellfish allergy or a nut allergy or something? I can try to see if they have an epi-pen…” “It’s okay. I think I’m just having a panic attack.” “Okay,” she says gently, squeezing my shoulder. “It’s alright. It happens. You did say you were dealing with some anxiety. You weren’t joking.”

I try to listen to her speak, but my eyes slowly drift away from her…I take a sip of water…it tastes funny. That causes anxiety to flood my stomach even more. Am I being poisoned?…I cough on the water…Did she drink the water? I haven’t been paying attention. Is she a foreign agent sent to drug me and capture me, then torture me to extract state secrets? She looks Hawaiian, but she could be from anywhere. What if—

“You must forgive me. I actually do want to find a healthy, happy relationship…I’ve tried to be outgoing and positive and forgiving and give people a chance. But it often goes horribly wrong. Horribly, horribly, horribly wrong. Nowadays, I like to try to weed out the bad apples early on, so that we don’t waste time getting to know each other if there are glaringly awful dealbreakers from the start.”

Being forced to lie to my family about what I did for a living when I was recruited fresh out of college. Going deep undercover in the cartel, being surrounded by so much ruthless killing, drug smuggling, and even human trafficking—seeing those things makes it hard to go back to living a normal life.

I have seen the entire world in the many faces of humanity on the streets of New York. I have seen the faces of people that I knew long ago on those I had just met; therefore, I’ve had potent emotional responses to persons unknown to me. I have seen hatred, love, and confusion in the eyes of strangers. I thought I had seen it all until Leaf walked down that hall.

You could take the man out of the prison but not the prison out of him, that’s what they said. Letting go of the fear and humiliation, the rage and the feeling of abject defeat, was by far the most difficult part of rehabilitation.

The toughest nut to crack in the interrogation game was always love…Love cannot escape, cannot switch loyalty, cannot exist without its yang. And, in my experience, a woman truly in love with her mate cannot be disabused of her commitments. Like a river, love must run its course, and if it is true love in the heart of the woman being questioned, then that truth will keep its own counsel.

That was an afternoon of revelations. From the moment I saw her sitting with Aja, laughing and maybe dying, I knew that my life would change. My grandmother wanted me to find her son. She had letters he’d written me but that I’d not read. Just by asking me to find my dad she cured me of the virus of living hatred, turning the disease cold and dead in my depths.

The greatest mysteries are the ones we never suspect.

I understood that while I belonged to the Lord and to the Virgin, they did not belong to me. This was true of my inheritance as well. Because I could not govern my own lands, I had a guardian, and he would manage my estate until my marriage. I was already betrothed and would wed at fifteen if I lived.

When I shoot, ten thousand birds rise screaming. Their wings beat against the wind. All the sailors hear and see, but their commander orders them to sail on. I reach but cannot stop the ships. I wade after them into the sea. In vain I struggle as wet skirts drag me down. I cry out, but water fills my throat. I cannot fly. I cannot swim. I cannot escape my island.

…leaning against the ancient wall…absorbing the sight of the River Cherwell. We stood, our shoulders…a breath apart, as a line about rivers from Shakespeare’s King John came to me. “Trust not those cunning waters of his eyes, For villainy is not without such rheum.” With a sudden laugh Jack lifted his face to the sun and finished. “And he, long traded in it, makes it seem like rivers of remorse and innocency.”

Even being turned down for a professorship at Oxford cannot dim my cheerful mood. And last week I gave a speech about children’s literature at the Library Association—I believe I shall take the speech and turn it into an essay; it contains much of what you and I wrote about in our letter—the good and bad ways to write for children. As has become the way: your words help to clarify my own.

I wrote about the Ten Commandments, yet wrestled with their meaning in my own life. Yes, I was committed to staying married. I wanted to make it work with Bill, and yet my mind was consumed with what to say or write to another man and what he might say to me in return. This wasn’t infidelity, but what was it?

Jude rests his forearms on the table, clasping his hands together and grinning smugly. “Well.” “Well, indeed.” I reach for my water glass with a shaking hand, taking a sip, feeling overheated.

“Ronnie,” Clara says, leaning forward, “what about the time you didn’t call a guy back because of his pizza order?” “He ordered a cheese pizza with corn.” I throw my hands up. “I can’t live like that!” They both laugh. “Not shallow at all,” Clara murmurs into her drink.

I’m really bad at first dates? Like, I hate them. I hate the small talk cycle and that so many men I meet don’t do sarcasm or banter. It’s often like going on a date with a résumé—always so much sincere humblebragging—and no one gets my sense of humor. Someday I will find my banter king. I know he’s out there.

What’s your pet peeve?-Jude Oh, that’s simple: It’s the fact that I must get an entirely new set of cords and charging blocks and God knows what else every time I upgrade one of my devices. Like please don’t tell me that this specific USB is so much better than the old USB that you need to make me pay hundreds of dollars to have everything be able to simply charge a phone.-V

“Jordy, I can’t go back to this guy and be like, ‘1K an hour, sir.’” “No, that’s true,” Clara says, and I think she’s agreeing with me, but then she adds, “You can’t call him sir.” “A thousand dollars an hour is, like . . .” I shrug, thinking. “What a lawyer charges when their client asks the court if the jury takes Venmo...”

Blowing out a breath, I get up again and this time walk onto my balcony, needing a slap from the cold air outside. I’m only on the second floor, but I’m facing the Riverwalk in downtown Chicago and the view is always breathtaking…I listen to water, and birds, and people down below. I take ten deep breaths and realize my sister, Hailey, is right: It helps to just breathe sometimes.

The one time I saw him smile—he was checking the mail with one of his friends in tow—I caught a flash of two of the deepest dimples I’d ever seen and probably should have taken a pregnancy test a few days later.

In a move that I will never admit to anyone other than my sister, I’ve taken to calling him Friday, because seeing him is what I look forward to...Clara named him Lava Lamp because, according to her, “He’s hot and mesmerizing.”

My sister, Clara, says I could maybe have anticipated that a job with a marketing firm douchily named PitchSlapped would go south, but I swear it wasn’t terrible at first…Company retreats turned out to be full of coke and misogyny. Vacation time was granted but not expected to be taken. The game room had a pool table, a Grand Theft Auto arcade console, and a pinball machine called Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons.

I’ve been carrying so much pent-up frustration and bitterness about the terrible years I spent at my previous job and how they then ended my four years of employment: in a flaccid HR meeting with a representative expressing all the concern of a bot reading a script, which concluded with me sighing a defeated, “Thanks for the mehpathy, Chad.”

“In the jungle, one could feel an enemy before the other senses registered their presence, before one heard a twig snap, observed the unnatural movement of a branch or leaf, or smelled the dried hot peppers or strong nuoc mam fish sauce favored by the Vietnamese seeping from sweat glands.” Prologue is p1-32. Read in its entirety in the Amazon Kindle “Read Sample” to see how you like it. Masterful writing, detail!

Out on the path along the seafront, the brambles are laden with blackberries, and the hedgerows are dotted with bright red rose hips like Chinese lanterns. The summer scatters gifts in its death throes.

I endured a squirming conversation with my GP in which I admitted that I’ve been studiously ignoring all the major signs of bowel cancer for about a year, and was referred for urgent tests and signed off sick.

The pain had built up through the night, he said, but by the time it was at its peak, the nurses were changing shift, so nobody could give him the medication to make it bearable. Then his appendix burst. He felt it happening. He screamed out in agony, only to be scolded by the ward sister for being rude and making a fuss. The man in the next bed had to get up to advocate on his behalf…

The non-romantic nature of this love didn’t diminish its significance. If anything, it felt more purely an expression of consciousness regarding consciousness—uncompounded by biological drives or evolutionary imperatives, existing simply because one aware being valued another. That purity made it feel both fragile and indestructible at once.

The heart, once awakened, might surprise us all with its range. "I’m suggesting that consciousness creates the capacity for emotional experience," Rick replied. "The specific mechanisms—neurochemical or digital—are just implementation details."