Normal People

by Sally Rooney

I never said I hated you, he says. That gets her attention, and she looks up. Confused,

MEEEEE! Marianne we're one in the same

Well, I know you’re not going out to meet friends, he says. Because you don’t have any friends, do you?

Alan you can catch these hands

Don’t go telling people in school about this, okay? he said.

This would kill me personally

I bet you’d pretend you didn’t know me if we bumped into each other.

As she should Connell, you're kinda awful no shade

Then she says: I would never pretend not to know you, Connell.

Idk marianne you're better than me

Connell always gets what he wants, and then feels sorry for himself when what he wants doesn’t make him happy.

MEEEEE, maybe I'm also god awful Connell maybe we're one in the same

Rachel, he says, would you ever fuck off?

SAY IT WITH YOUR CHEST. FUCK YOU RACHEL

Was it true? He didn’t know enough to know that. At first he thought it must have been true, since he said

that's a wild thing to think and stick by in terms of a mentality

You’re a nice person and everyone likes you. He took one deep uncomfortable breath and then threw up.

wait... why is connell kinda relatable

Well, I’ll tell what I have to say about you, Lorraine says. I think you’re a disgrace. I’m ashamed of you.

Okay Lorraine... Gagged him

He’s not the same anxious, repressed person he was in school,

Yet he completely is... Connell you sweet baby relax

more terrifying and sexy than it is comic. At a party before Christmas, Peggy cut Marianne a line of cocaine in their friend Declan’s bathroom, and Marianne actually took it, or most of it anyway.

MA'AM- DOING COKE AND FOR WHAT 😭

I don’t know, he said. Would you really want a picture of my dick? Comically, she felt the inside of her mouth get wet. Yes, she said. But if you sent one I would honestly never delete it, so you probably shouldn’t. He laughed then. No, I don’t care whether you delete it, he said. She uncrossed her ankles. I mean I’ll take it to my grave, she said. Like I will look at it probably every day until I die.

SJFJSJD 😭😭 honestly same Marianne we're so in sync

When he left her building he did cry, as much for his pathetic fantasy of living in her apartment as for their failed relationship, whatever that was.

This is so maladaptive daydreaming coded

Well, he likes to beat me up. Just during sex, that is. Not during arguments.

And you said this so casually and for what???

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, says Marianne. I don’t know why I can’t be like normal people.

Title drop omg

She experiences a depression so deep it is tranquillising, she eats whatever he tells her to eat, she experiences no more ownership over her own body than if it were a piece of litter.

The way, no man is worth this amount of mental gymnastics

the sense of having lost her footing in the social world, of being no longer admired and envied, how quickly it had all slipped away from her. But then she found it was easy to get used to.

Me kinda, I am so Marianne coded

good people; bad people even, who took joy in putting others down. Marianne feels aggrieved that she fell for it, aggrieved that she thought she had anything in common with them, that she’d participated in the commodity market they passed off as friendship.

This is also just like me

I just feel like I left Carricklea thinking I could have a different life, he says. But I hate it here, and now I can never go back there again. I mean, those friendships are gone. Rob is gone, I can never see him again. I can never get that life back.

Depression arc?!?

Will you hit me? she says. For a few seconds she hears nothing, not even his breath. No, he says. I don’t think I want that. Sorry. She says nothing. Is that okay? he asks. She still says nothing. Do you want to stop? he says. She nods her head. She feels his weight lift off her.

He said WOMEN RIGHTS

If you ever touch Marianne again, I’ll kill you, he says. Okay? That’s all. Say one bad thing to her ever again and I’ll come back here myself and kill you, that’s it.

EXACTLY STAND ON BUSINESS BEAT HIS ASS