The Rules Do Not Apply

by Ariel Levy

I began to feel claustrophobic in my own house. I shared our cat’s fevered desperation to find an open window, a door left ajar, a precious opportunity to escape and go . . . where? I am afraid that I will pull this house apart, I wrote in my journal. And then it will be winter and I’ll be outside, freezing.

Even if one life is manifest and the other is mostly hypothetical, the inability to occupy your own reality is torment, is torture. It is sin and punishment all in one.

Extricating myself from my affair was like shattering a great pane of glass in the middle of a room: months after I’d finished cleaning up the crash, there were still shards lurking in the corners. I was still picking small, vicious slivers out of the soles of my feet.