Beautiful Ugly

by Alice Feeney

My books have always been a place to hide myself inside myself when the real world gets too loud. 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.

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, but at least there is someone else who thinks about Abby as often as I do.

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.

“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.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t. Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.

Life is beautiful and life is ugly and we have to learn to live with both sides of that same coin and see the light in the darkness. The world is Beautiful Ugly, relationships are Beautiful Ugly, love is Beautiful Ugly. Understanding that makes life easier to live with.”