You Think It, I'll Say It

by Curtis Sittenfeld

(It’s not that she’s unaware that she’s an elitist asshole. She’s aware! She’s just powerless not to be one.

Despite the location of its origins, it had been a happiness wholly unattached to her children; it had been a grown-up happiness.

had no idea, of course, that of all the feelings of my youth that would pass, it was this one, of an abundance of time so great as to routinely be unfillable, that would vanish with the least ceremony.

seeing, I am filled with gratitude at the astonishing fact of being married to someone I enjoy talking to, someone with whom I can’t imagine ever running out of things to say.

I’m relieved to have aged out of that visceral sense that my primary obligation is to be pretty, relieved to work at a job that allows me to feel useful.