When You Disappeared

by John Marrs

That’s where you killed me,

nip these thoughts in the bud.

I definitely did not know this: Unless you're a guard dog, don't nip anyone in the butt! Nip it in the butt is just a mishearing of nip it in the bud — but this flowery phrase has nothing to do with rear ends or small, unused parts of something (two common meanings of butt). Even big publications get it wrong sometimes, as in this example: In view of European history, the reverse would be the start of a very bitter road down a slippery slope and we have to nip this in the butt. (Time) Ouch! To remember the correct expression, think of an unwanted weed or plant in the garden that you should nip in the bud before it grows out of control.

The longer I dwelled on the badness, the harder it would be to anticipate the good times ahead. But I had freedom to choose and I could, if I wanted to, reject those thoughts.

Because the more you trust in someone, the more opportunities you give them to shatter your illusions about them.

but she’d stayed and she’d lied, like all women do.

🤔

It was better to remain on my island than drown in somebody else’s sea.

that’s what love is, Simon. It’s never giving up on the person you’ve given your heart to. It’s having faith that no matter how tough things get, that person will always be looking for you.’

28 October

an eerie feeling of detachment came across me. It was like the trauma of what had just happened belonged to someone else, not me.

my colleagues had no idea I’d left the aisle as two people and come back as one. Or that I’d just killed my second child in less than two years.

You can either learn from your parents’ mistakes, or repeat them and use them as an excuse for your own behaviour.

But I knew eventually it would fail me. Everything that makes you happy eventually disappoints.

He was a sensitive, insular child who carried the weight of the world on his young shoulders at a time when it should have been carrying him. He could make a minor problem ten times worse by dwelling on it rather than sharing it with me.

I’d had a firm understanding of how my thought process operated and I’d manipulated it accordingly.

‘Dougie. My best friend. You had an affair with my best friend.’

This is the reason!? What a pathetic man

From behind, I felt him push up my skirt and yank down my underwear, then he pulled down his trousers before forcing himself into me.

He knew that for twenty-five years he had got things very, very wrong.

Again pathietic man

Poor timing was an excuse, not a reason, and a pretty weak one at that.

Well thats degrading to rape victims

A thousand times she’d asked herself what she’d done to make him cast her aside, and now she knew. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

‘There is no possibility Billy could have been Dougie’s child because he sodomised me.’

The hurt she had caused me was nothing compared to what I had done to her.

He’d been the architect of his own misery.