Conversations with Friends

by Sally Rooney

Things matter to me more than they do to normal people, I thought. I need to relax and let things go.

I moved the sentences here and there, and then seemingly at random I hit the send button. Afterward I shut my laptop and went back to sitting on the floor.

Anxiety was just a chemical phenomenon producing bad feelings. Feelings were just feelings, they had no material reality.

love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you. I shared in this desire for moral superiority over my enemies. Jesus always wanted to be the better person, and so did I.

Even though I had known Nick didn’t love me, I had continued to let him have sex with me whenever he wanted, out of desperation and a naive hope that he didn’t understand what he was inflicting on me. Now even that hope was gone.

Everyone’s always going through something, aren’t they? That’s life, basically. It’s just more and more things to go through.

Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.

I lay on my bed feeling like a light had been switched off.