1. “You’re like one of those dogs, the unwanted ones that have been mistreated all their lives. You can kick them and kick them, but they’ll still come back to you, cringing and wagging their tails. Begging. Hoping that this time it’ll be different, that this time they’ll do something right and you’ll love them.”
2. “I feel about an incident is proportionate not just to the gravity of the situation, but also to the number of people who have witnessed it.”
3. “But I did become sadder, and sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them.”
4. “He’s a master at it, making me feel as though everything is my fault, making me feel worthless.”
5. “It’s not even rejection, it’s dismissal.”
6. “I’d never realized, not until the last year or two of my life, how shaming it is to be pitied.”
7. “Sometimes, I don’t want to go anywhere, I think I’ll be happy if I never have to set foot outside the house again.”
8. “Life and light will not let me be.”
9. “There’s nothing so painful, so corrosive, as suspicion.”
10. “I just don’t know whether he’s the condemned man or the executioner.”
11. “I can’t risk looking backwards, it’s always a bad idea.”
12. “I close my eyes and let the darkness grow and spread until it morphs from a feeling of sadness into something worse: a memory, a flashback.”
13. “There are familiar faces on these trains, people I see every week, going to and fro. I recognize them and they probably recognize me. I don’t know whether they see me, though, for what I really am.”
14. “After all he gave up for me, for the two of us to be together, I let him think that he wasn’t enough.”
15. “When did you become so weak?” I don’t know. I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it.”
16. “I am not the girl I used to be. I am no longer desirable, I’m off-putting in some way. It’s not just that I’ve put on weight, or that my face is puffy from the drinking and the lack of sleep; it’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move.”
17. “On the way back down the road, he passes me in his car, our eyes meet for just a second and he smiles at me.”
18. “I don’t know. I don’t know where that strength went, I don’t remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it.”
19. “He doesn’t know how determined I can be. Once I’ve made my mind up, I’m a force to be reckoned with.”
20. “After a while, I learned that when you wake up like that, you don’t ask what happened, you just say that you’re sorry: you’re sorry for what you did and who you are and you’re never, ever going to behave like that again.”
21. “know what it is to love someone and to say the most terrible things to them, in anger or anguish.”
22. “I have to find a way of making myself happy, I have to stop looking for happiness elsewhere. It’s true,”
23. “If I could just discover how to focus on this happiness, enjoy the moment, not wonder about where the next high is coming from – then everything will be alright.”
24. “In no time at all, I find myself crying again. It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers. Someone who looks at you, who doesn’t know you, who tells you it’s OK, whatever you did, whatever you’ve done: you suffered, you hurt, you deserve forgiveness.”
25. “There’s something comforting about the sight of strangers safe at home.”
26. “I know that I’m going to be better, that I’m going to be happy. It won’t be long.”
27. “It broke me and I broke us.”
28. “The windows of number fifteen, reflecting morning sunshine, look like sightless eyes.”
29. “it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.”
30. “For some reason, I am certain that there is something I’m missing, something vital. Perhaps this is just more self-deception, yet another attempt to prove to myself that I’m not worthless.”
31. “the sense of shame I feel about an incident is proportionate not just to the gravity of the situation, but also to the number of people who witnessed it.”
32. “If he thinks I’m going to sit around crying over him, he’s got another thing coming. I can live without him, I can do without him just fine—but I don’t like to lose. It’s not like me. None of this is like me. I don’t get rejected. I’m the one who walks away.”
33. “So who do I want to be tomorrow?”
34. “I don’t remember things. I black out and I can’t remember where I’ve been or what I’ve done. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve done or said terrible things, and I can’t remember. And if…if someone tells me something I’ve done, it doesn’t even feel like me. it doesn’t feel like it was me who was doing that thing. And it’s so hard to feel responsible for something you don’t remember. So I never feel bad enough. i feel bad, but the thing that i’ve done –it’s removed from me. It’s like it doesn’t belong to me.”
35. “The more I want to be oblivious, the less I can be. Life and light will not let me be.”
36. “I did become sadder, and sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them.”
37. “Life is not a paragraph, and death is no parenthesis.”
38. “They’re what I lost, they’re everything I want to be.”
39. “Being the other woman is a huge turn-on, there’s no point denying it: you’re the one he can’t help but betray his wife for, even though he loves her. That’s just how irresistible you are.”
40. “I can’t do this, I can’t just be a wife. I don’t understand how anyone does it—there is literally nothing to do but wait. Wait for a man to come home and love you. Either that or look around for something to distract you.”
41. “You’re not some grieving, lost child any longer. You’re a completely different person. You’re stronger. You’re an adult now. You don’t have to be afraid of being alone. It’s not the worst thing, is it?”
42. “The last thing I need is rest. I need to find something to fill my days. I know what’s going to happen if I don’t.”
43. “Hollowness: that I understand. I’m starting to believe that there isn’t anything you can do to fix it. That’s what I’ve taken from the therapy sessions: the holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mold yourself through the gaps”
44. “To have my hopes raised and dashed again, it’s like cold steel twisting in my gut.”
45. “People you have a history with, they won’t let you go, and as hard as you might try, you can’t disentangle yourself, can’t set yourself free. Maybe after a while you just stop trying.”
46. “I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. It comes from shared experience, knowing how it feels to be broken.”
47. “Let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things–their looks and their role as mothers. I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless.”
48. “He loves me so much, it makes me ache. I don’t know how he does it. I would drive me mad.”
49. “He lies to himself the way he lies to me. He believes this. He actually believes that he was good to me.”
50. “I never learn. I wake with a crushing sensation of wrongness, of shame, and I know immediately that I’ve done something stupid.”
51. “The memory doesn’t fit with the reality, because I don’t remember anger, raging fury. I remember fear.”
52. “At night I can hear it, quiet but unrelenting, undeniable: a whisper in my head, Slip away. When I close my eyes, my head is filled with images of past and future lives, the things I had and threw away. I can’t get comfortable, because every way I turn I run into dead ends.”
53. “but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it.”
54. “Sometimes I catch myself trying to remember the last time I had meaningful physical contact with another person, just a hug or a heartfelt squeeze of my hand, and my heart twitches.”
55. “let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers.”
56. “I woke feverish, panicky. Guilty. I do feel guilty. Just not guilty enough.”
57. “There was a time when I thought he could be everything, he could be enough. I thought that for years. I loved him completely. I still do. But I don’t want this any longer.”
58. “What does it feel like, Anna, to live in my house, surrounded by the furniture I bought, to sleep in the bed that I shared with him for years, to feed your child at the kitchen table he fucked me on?”
59. “The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it.”
60. “it comes down to it, they feel a bit pointless, as if I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it. I need to find something that I must do, something undeniable.”
61. “He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.”
62. “And I’ve just got to let myself feel the pain, because if I don’t, if I keep numbing it, it’ll never really go away.”
63. “Sometimes I want to scream at him, Just let me go. Let me go. Let me breathe. So I can’t sleep, and I’m angry. I feel as though we’re having a fight already, even though the fight’s only in my imagination.”
64. “I liked my job, but I didn’t have a glittering career, and even if I had, let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things—their looks and their role as mothers. I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless.”
65. “It feels like coming home – not just to any home, but a childhood home, a place left behind a lifetime ago; it’s the familiarity of walking up stairs and knowing exactly which one is going to creak.”
66. “He finishes his beer and rolls the empty bottle across the table. With a sad shake of his head, he gets to his feet, comes over to me and holds out his hands. “Come on,” he says. “Grab hold. Come on, Rach, up you”
67. “I don’t believe in soul mates, but there’s an understanding between us that I just haven’t felt before, or at least, not for a long time. It comes from shared experience, from knowing how it feels to be broken.”
68. “It could be her birthday, it could be the morning of the Rapture—Cathy will get up early on Saturday to clean.”
69. “I know is, one minute I’m ticking along fine and life is sweet and I want for nothing, and the next I can’t wait to get away, I’m all over the place, slipping and sliding again.”
70. “Every time I hear footsteps on the steps, my heart rate goes up. Every time I hear the clacking of high heels, I am seized with trepidation.”
71. “After everything he’s been through he deserves to be happy, I will never begrude him happiness, I only wish it could be with me.”
72. “A familiar ache fills my chest. I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it.”
73. “I’ve been the fool. If he does it with you, he’ll do it to you.”
74. “I’m playing at real life instead of actually living it.”
75. “I felt guilty. Stupid, I know, but I thought about Scott—about what we did and how it felt—and I wished I hadn’t done it, because it felt like a betrayal. Of Tom. The man who left me for another woman two years ago. I can’t help how I feel.”
76. “some battles aren’t worth fighting.”
77. “This is what marriage is—safe, warm, comfortable.”
78. “I’m good enough to make him believe that it’s all about him.”
79. “One more day of drinking, perhaps, and then I’ll get myself straight tomorrow.”
80. “It’s impossible to resist the kindness of strangers.”
81. “It actually wasn’t about her child at all, although the fact that the child never stops whinging did make her hard to love.”
82. “The holes in your life are permanent. You have to grow around them, like tree roots around concrete; you mould yourself through the gaps.”
83. “I need to find something that I must do, something undeniable.”
84. “I feel a real sense of disappointment, I feel as though I have been cheated on. A familiar ache fills my chest. I have felt this way before. On a larger scale, to a more intense degree, of course, but I remember the quality of the pain. You don’t forget it.”
85. “What if the thing I’m looking for can never be found? What if it just isn’t possible?”
86. “If I turned right here I’d go up past my gallery—what was my gallery, now a vacant shop window—but I don’t want to, because that still hurts a little.”
87. “I have never understood how people can blithely disregard the damage they do by following their hearts.”
88. “No matter how much I love him, it won’t be enough.”
89. “I quit! I feel so much better, as if anything is possible. I’m free!”
90. “I have lost control over everything, even the places in my head.”
91. “it’s as if people can see the damage written all over me, can see it in my face, the way I hold myself, the way I move.”
92. “He lied all the time, about everything. Even when he didn’t need to, even when there was no point. … Tom’s whole life was constructed on lies — falsehoods and half-truths told to make him look better, stronger, more interesting than he was. And I bought them. I fell for them all. … I wonder whether [I] would have loved the weaker, flawed, unembellished version. I think I would. I would have forgiven his mistakes and his failures. I have committed enough of my own.”
93. “So who do I want to be tomorrow?”
