Beautiful Ugly

by Alice Feeney

If all we need is love, why do we always want more?

Marriage is made of a million beautiful and ugly moments stitched together into a shared tapestry of memories, all of which are viewed and remembered slightly differently, like two people staring at the same painting from opposite ends of a room.

People rarely do what they say they will or what they should.

The only thing I don’t like about being alone is the amount of time it forces me to spend with myself.

Some people think hiding their grief will make it go away, but in my experience it only makes it hurt more. Grief is only ever yours; it’s not something you can share,

I’m seriously jealous of all the people who have never met you.

Grief is a patient thief and steals far more than people who have never known it realize.

“Success is often the result of a series of failures. Try to remember that. You never learn anything from success, but failure can teach you everything about a person. Especially yourself.

Are there any benefits to losing it all? I think about that a lot. Your thoughts can change shape when you have too much time on your hands. Overthinking the things you think you need to worry about, under-thinking the things you should. The only good thing about losing everything is having nothing left to lose.

“People rarely know what they have until they lose it. They spend their lives searching for a better one, wanting more, needing more, blind to the fact that they already had it all. I think sometimes it’s only when something gets taken from a person that they appreciate what they had.

I keep my thoughts to myself because silence cannot be misquoted.

It’s the not giving up that separates the winners from the losers.

In my experience, there is no such thing as a random order of events; everything happens when it happens for a reason, even if the reason is hard to see at the time.

Constantly lying to yourself requires a special variety of stamina.

Have you ever met someone and just clicked? As though you had known them for years even though you had just met?

It’s far easier to pretend your problems away if you can’t see them.

We all laugh then but I can’t wait to leave.

My mind wanders to Abby, as it so often does, and I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.

When life bends itself into a question mark you start looking for answers, and when you can’t find the right ones, you go looking for the wrong ones instead.

Her mood swings are unsettling but I try not to overthink it. Most people are contradictions of themselves.

It’s strange to think that this spectacular night sky is always above us, wherever we are. We’re all just too busy looking down to remember to look up.

You can only rearrange the furniture of your life a number of times before things look the same as they did.

Sadness can consume a person if it is allowed to linger too long. It takes root and buries itself inside a person’s soul, until every thought is too heavy, too painful to think.

My past has been leaning hard on me lately. My mind keeps revisiting parts of it I would rather forget. Nobody wants to be constantly reminded of their mistakes or shortcomings, but I guess there are some we can’t ever run from.

Wishing you could change the script of your life when the scene is over is pointless.

I just keep making mistakes and unfortunately I’m not the only one who gets hurt when I do.

I don’t know who the woman Abby wrote about was, but I do know that my wife often campaigned for victims of domestic abuse. As we all should. I don’t understand any man who could hit a woman, but then most acts of violence baffle and appall me.

I’m the first to admit that men can be very stupid.

“Because look at this view,” she said, pulling back the curtains. “I think sometimes things have to get really dark for us to see what we have.

I think it sounds a bit like a cult but keep my thoughts to myself.

I don’t know if my wife is dead but I think I see her all the time. I still sometimes forget that she’s gone, and when I remember, it’s like being swallowed by my grief all over again.

They even use the term ‘different’ as though it were an ugly word. I choose to see the world differently, and I think there is much beauty to be found in imperfection. And I love that something beautiful can come out of something so ugly.”

The three basic fundamental fears that all humans experience are: Fear of death. Fear of abandonment. Fear of failure.

It sometimes feels as though life has passed me by and I wonder if other people feel that way too. Surely it can’t only be me.

I’m just scared of hurting him. Nobody wants to hurt someone they love.” “So you do still love him?” she asks, and the weight of her question feels too heavy, as does her stare. I look away. Then the woman in black who has spent the last hour listening to me, watching me, judging me, says something that I already know is going to haunt me. “Nobody said it was easy, but love is always worth fighting for, isn’t it? I think maybe it’s the only thing worth fighting for.”

I like to think of myself as a cheerful pessimist. Life is less depressing if you accept that people will always disappoint you.

“People rarely know what they deserve. They almost always think they deserve more or less than they do.”

It was as though he thought I only had enough love for one person, and he needed it to always be him. I get that he has abandonment issues because of his mum and dad, but everyone gets fucked up by their parents.

Fear can make something beautiful appear ugly.”

I think when a relationship unravels, the way ours did, it’s impossible not to look back and wonder who was to blame. To relive the good times as well as the bad and wonder What if? A broken record of whys regularly spins inside my head but never plays the answer. Memory lane is a dead end but if I close my eyes I can still remember the people we used to be.

You had it all but you were too busy worrying about what you didn’t have to notice.”

Sometimes giving people what they think they want is the best way to show them what they had.”