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For so long I had been looking hard into every person I met, hoping I might discover in them all the thoughts and feelings I hoped life would give me, but hadn’t. There are some people who say you have to find such things in yourself, that you cannot count on anyone to supply even the smallest crumb that your life lacks. Although I knew this might be true, it didn’t prevent me from looking anyway. Who cares what people say? What people say has no effect on your heart.
In their quest for a life without failure, suffering, or doubt, that is what they achieve: a life empty of all those things that make a human life meaningful. And yet they started off believing themselves too special for this world!
May the Lord have mercy on me for I am a fucking idiot.
Goddamnit, the man had no more connection to the truth than a stenographer!
Other people knew how to think, I thought, had opinions on things, a point of view. I did not.
I again brought up my fear. I explained that I felt my insides were a blank—a total neutrality—null. “That’s amazing!” she said. “God, everyone else is like these automatic windup toys.”
There in my crummy apartment, I felt like we were together after the Fall, expelled from a perfect garden. I always imagined a golden age—a time before the Fall, between me and every other person—before they knew my ugliness. Then I felt irrevocably uneasy once it had been revealed, when there could be no more appealing to their total trust and admiration, to that early, easy innocence.
Really? That’s amusing. I like boring people. I think it’s a virtue. People should be a little bored.
Who am I to hold myself aloof from the terrible fates of the world? My life need be no less ugly than the rest.
with you, it’s like you never believe you have any effect on people. maybe you don’t think you’re a person because you haven’t decided what sort of person to be.
