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She walks while listening to audiobooks or chatty, anodyne podcasts, anything to ensure she’s not alone with her thoughts.
You can feel fondness, irritation, lust, gratitude all in the same half-hour. The trick is to understand this process, this ebb and flow, and not be panicked by your own emotions. Because as long as you’re both in this together, a team, you know deep in your bones that this is just part of the glorious business of being human.
“Is it really me?” Eleanor stops and considers this. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I know who I am these days. I thought I had everything all planned out for the rest of my life,
Now I just try to live every day with an open heart and an open mind and see what happens.”
Marriage, I’ve learned over fifteen years, is a never-ending series of constantly shifting compromises. Your partner is not always going to behave in the way you want. You probably don’t behave in a way they want. The trick is to look at the big picture,
The key, I’ve found, to moving forward, is asking myself, during these moments: do I want to be right? Or do I want to be happy?
No, she is an adult woman, and she is allowed to do as she likes. Occasionally.
it’s only hurt people who hurt people.”
Why is it impossible for a woman ever to sit and exist by herself? It’s the dress, she
Her own garden is finished, the last of the plants dug in and watered, and for the last week she has sat out here every evening, Truant at her feet, just enjoying the space and the peace. It is as if she has been given a whole extra room in her house, a place where she can feel quite different, a place without a complicated history.
This is life at this age, she muses, a million goodbyes, and you never know which are the final ones. You just absorb them, like little shocks, trusting with each one that you’ll be able to keep moving forward.
Lila is not sure she would know who she was without Eleanor around. It’s a constant revelation to her, the way these friendships become more important the older they get.
