Evidence of the Affair

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

It is funny the crazy things our brains make up to save us from the truth.

My mother has always told me that I have more opportunities, as a woman of my generation, than she ever had. She made it seem like I had an obligation to use them how she would have.

I’ve always been struck by the idea that you can’t be all that happy something has returned if it doesn’t go away in the first place.

I feel so hopelessly pathetic. So unloved, so unremarkable. I feel like the girl at the party nobody wants to dance with. There I am, hoping someone might choose me, while the rest of the world goes on dancing.

But lately I find that in those moments, I think of you. I am not alone at the party. You are at this miserable party with me. And it brings a smile to my face to be standing next to you.

well. It has been a long time since I laughed that hard, since I was that interested in learning what someone had to say.

It seems as if you see me exactly as I wish to be seen. There is no greater gift than that.

You don’t deserve it either. You lack nothing, regardless of what roadblocks you have hit in your life, no matter what things in life don’t come easy to you. You lack nothing at all. I hope you see that.

Thank you for helping me hold my head a bit higher at a time in which it has every reason to hang low.

Anyway, about the sandbar. It reminded me of you because you are my sandbar. I was lost at sea, and then you showed up. My dry land.

Janet says that is when she realized that our broken marriage had hurt both of us. That I must be hurting, too.