Circe

by Madeline Miller

I would like to say that all the while I waited to break out, but the truth is, I’m afraid I might have floated on, believing those dull miseries were all there was, until the end of days.

That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.

No wonder I have been so slow, I thought. All this while, I have been a weaver without wool, a ship without the sea. Yet now look where I sail.

I had a little pride, as I have said, and that was good. More would have been fatal.

Yet because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.

If you had asked me, I would have said I was happy. Yet always I remembered.

“We bear it as best we can,”

That old sickening feeling returned: that every moment of my life I had been a fool.

“The world is an ugly place. We must live in it.”

He was another knife, I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.

Every night when he slept, I stood over his bed and told myself: tomorrow I will do better. Sometimes it was even true.

I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.

One of us must grieve. I would not let it be him.

He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.