You Deserve Each Other

by Sarah Hogle

My aesthetic is aggressively, unapologetically basic.

I could be riding a roller coaster or writing a grocery list and my enthusiasm level would look the same.

I nod and agree like the good little fiancée I am, but I am not a good fiancée at all because I feel like I might fall apart at any moment.

Ratio-wise, I would say that I’m forty percent in love with Nicholas.

The truth is that I don’t think any two people both feel one hundred percent in love with each other at the same exact time, all the time. They might take turns being seventy-five, their personal high, while the other clocks in at sixty.

you can’t tell men about your unfixable problems, because they’ll want to fix them and not being able to do so fries their wiring.

We don’t need to say sweet words in person because we know what Real Love is.

may this kind of love never find me.

Actually, do you have time to make cookies tonight? Stacy’ll be able to tell if I haven’t made them. I don’t want to hear her bitch.” I give him a contemptuous look he doesn’t see. “No. I’m going to Brandy’s.” “So am I, but we’ve got plenty of time until then, don’t we? And I need to jump in the shower, while you’re not doing anything but sitting on the couch. Can you just whip up some cookies real quick?”

ICK

Misery loves company, after all.

He’s the thief of my joy and future father of my children. Right now I love him twenty percent.

this is such a toxic relationship

I ask in a tone that sounds like I love him. It’s an effort, and I’m exhausted.

Our relationship might be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, but when I go over it while in a positive frame of mind, it doesn’t look that bad, so then I’m unsure.

“Of course you’re invited to the wedding!” There will never be a wedding.

He’s my fiancé, but not. I don’t know what we are. Who we are.

“I don’t want to live here.” He’s losing patience. “I don’t really care what you want, to be honest. I don’t like you again yet. But I’m going to. And you’re going to like me again, too. This house is going to save us.”

ick. ick. ick.

I thought you’d love it. Just like with the flowers you complained I never get for you. But then when I do get you flowers, you SET THEM ON FIRE.”

“You stopped seeing me, Naomi. You stopped wanting me. You’re going to figure out one of these days that I can tell when you’re starting to disassociate, and it’s the most heartbreaking experience I’ve ever had. It’s nonstop. It keeps on happening. I try to bring you back to me every time you go to leave, off into your own head where I’m not allowed.”

I scroll through Instagram for five minutes and then have to shut my phone off because everybody else’s lives are amazing and mine is a black hole.

one fiancé too many. I have an abundance of odious fiancé. How am I going to get rid of him? I cannot marry this mama’s boy. Every time I picture the wedding I break out in hives.

You can’t pick your parents or your grandparents, but you can pick your children’s parents and grandparents.

When I started to laugh, he got even madder. “DENTAL HYGIENE IS NOT A JOKE, NAOMI.”

Everything is falling so wonderfully apart, I hope.

It feels like he’s always leaving right when I want him to stay. When I need him here and he leaves, I lose something every time, over and over. He takes it from me when he goes. Always going. He’s never going to belong to me. He’s never going to want to stay with me. I’m never going to be enough.

People who wake up looking glamorous can’t be trusted.

Everything’s easy when your eyes are innocent and you don’t spot the hidden dangers.

I have to make an admission to myself: I have no idea what’s happening anymore. It’s terrifying.

I’m struck by the realization that my fiancé and I are becoming friends again.

An evil twist of fate: I don’t think I want it to be the end. Not anymore.

I’ve been so concentrated on my own unhappiness that I haven’t noticed his.

I tried to keep him at a safe distance where he could only see the decent parts of me and it made us both miserable.

Against all wisdom, I fall a little bit in love with pretending it won’t fall apart.

It’s such a bummer that now I have to miss his stupid, adorable face when he’s gone.

She’s worth the pain of trying, is how he put it. Worth the risk of failing.”

This is one of the reasons why I love Brandy. She roots for other people’s joy.

“If I’ve lost it, then good riddance to whatever it was that I had.”