Sorry for the Inconvenience: A Memoir

by Farah Naz Rishi

But I hated being in a world that demanded women protect themselves instead of punishing the men who would harm them in the first place.

Perhaps this is why we forgive people who don’t deserve it: nostalgia is a hell of a drug. It blurred all the bad, brightened the scant good, and told you pretty lies.

Think of it this way. We live in a dark, chaotic world, so we build structures through art to feel safe in it. The same way people build houses so they wouldn’t be at the mercy of the weather. Things like stories, games—these are emotional houses from the random crap that happens in our lives. Like getting sick. People dying. Reaping bad luck when you don’t deserve it. Art is a safe house, he said. Your writing—that’s your safe house.

I wish I knew. Grief, I thought, was supposed to be beautiful in its own way. Like shards of ice on skin: a stingingly cold, delicate yet razor-edged proof of the love left behind.

Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”