Since We Fell

by Dennis Lehane

“You know when you’re a kid and you don’t get picked for the team, or someone you like doesn’t like you back, or your parents reject or marginalize you not because of something you did but because they were fucked up and toxic?” “Yes and yes and yes. I can’t wait to see where you’re going with this.” Now he took a drink. “I think of those times—and there are lots of them in a childhood; they accrue—and I realize that I always believed to my core that they were right. I wasn’t worthy of the team, I wasn’t fit to be liked back, my family rejected me because I deserved to be rejected.” He put his glass on the bar. “What I don’t like about myself is that sometimes I don’t really like myself.” “And no matter how much good you do,” she said, “no matter how great a friend you are, how great a wife or husband, how great a humanitarian, nothing, I mean, nothing—” “Nothing,” he said. “—will ever make up for what a piece of shit you really are.”