How Should a Person Be?: A Novel from Life

by Sheila Heti

Who cares what people say? What people say has no effect on your heart.

puer aeternus—the eternal child

The world is

full to brimming with its own shit. A little more from me won’t even make a difference—it’s only natural. It’s to be expected.

I left the copy shop frustrated and upset. He was just another man who wanted to teach me something.

I sat down in the sand and looked out at the waves. It was so terrible to be alone. I felt how heavy my brain was in my head with all the questions that had been repeating for years.

The sea moved forward and back with all these possibilities, and all of them were true. Yet it didn’t grow tired of itself the way I did. Why not?

Who cares? There would be no answers for me ever. I wanted to lose everything I ever had, or win back everything I had ever lost.

I tried to relax, but I could not because itchiness and heat were all over me everywhere. There was nothing in me that did not mourn. I knew I would always lose what was good. That was the kind of person I would always be.

The heat of shame was the heat of my body. There was not one cell in my body unsullied by what I had done.

The way he saw me was not the same thing as me.

Who am I to hold myself aloof from the terrible fates of the world? My life need be no less ugly than the rest.

Why did we find it so irresistible to make ourselves into tragic figures with tragic flaws which were responsible for our pain?