← Vie’s Library
And where did this sadness come from? Did her father pass it on like a blood disease?
Because Cinderella never would have been at the center of the novel if her mother had lived.
The mother had to die so that the girl started in a place of desperation,
Watch the good girl grow up, watch the girl try very hard to get everything she wants, then
watch how happy she becomes.
watch how happy she becomes. The end.
but she couldn’t yell then. She was still trying so hard to be her best self, to stay reasonable, to save the marriage, to ask the right questions, gather all the information, as if understanding could
help her solve the problem. But it
She had felt this way in her marriage, too—careful never to cry too hard or tell meandering stories at dinner. Careful
Careful never to lose control.
she thinks too much. She thinks and thinks and thinks until she gets so tired of thinking, she never properly finishes whatever she started.
“You catastrophize,” her therapist said to her once. “Depressive realism.”
this recognition that night is something we must prepare for. Because the night is hard.
presence had somehow become irrelevant to her own husband, and how are people supposed to tolerate that kind of pain? How are you supposed to go from being the center of someone’s world to being irrelevant?
And maybe they are all lonely. Maybe this is just what it means to be a person. To constantly reckon with being a single being in one body.
I thought love was about getting something from people.
“God, we’re all so ridiculous! Why do we all think everything is our fault
all the time?” “Must be some evolutionary thing.” “Helps us survive somehow,”
all the time?” “Must be some evolutionary thing.” “Helps us survive somehow,” Phoebe says. “Even as it destroys us.”
Like the happiness becomes so big, you have no choice but to live inside of it, until you can no longer see it or feel it. And so you start to fixate on something else—
“Can we not?” “I think we talk about happiness all wrong. As if it’s this fixed state we’re going to reach.
“I think we talk about happiness all wrong. As if it’s this fixed state we’re going to reach. Like we’ll just be able to live there, forever. But that’s not my experience with happiness.
As if it’s this fixed state we’re going to reach.
She wonders what they wish for when they wish for different lives.
It asks the question: What
does a person still need once a person has everything?
It is not an easy thing to do, walk away from what you’ve built and save yourself.
It is so much easier to sit in things and wait for something to save us.