Confessions on the 7:45

by Lisa Unger

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” —George Orwell, 1984

Everyone was on broadcast these days, thrusting out versions of themselves, cropped and filtered for public consumption. Everyone putting on the “show of me.” It was when people were alone, unobserved, that the mask came off.

Sometimes didn’t it seem like people didn’t see anymore? They didn’t look out. They looked down, at that device in their hands. Or in, mesmerized by the movie of past and future, desires and fears, always playing on the screen in their minds.

She’d tell herself that she didn’t know then. She didn’t know that beneath the mask, he was a monster.

“Society doesn’t always know what’s right. Our families tell us stories about ourselves that often aren’t true. Sometimes we have to follow our hearts.”

She liked the shadows. That’s where you got to see all the things that other people missed.

She didn’t even know until that moment how nice it was to be seen.

There’s something about you. When I look into your eyes, I feel like I’m floating into nothing,

But mainly, people were so wrapped up in their own inner hurricane that they never saw anything outside the storm of themselves.

Arrested development. When a person stops maturing at a point of trauma, grief, or at a place in her life when she felt the profound and total loss of love from a primary caregiver.

When the same thing happens again and again, we have to look at that. We have to unpack it and figure out why we cause ourselves and others pain.

Story is story, Stella said. It’s a portal you walk through into another world. And this world—which usually sucks—just disappears.

“All women are mysteries.” “Only men think that,” said Pearl. “Largely because they’re not paying attention.”

You can’t con an honest man.

Who you were is gone. Who you will be—she doesn’t exist. The only thing that matters is who are you are right now.

“The past doesn’t matter. That’s what Mom always said. All we have is right now.”

People didn’t fall in love with other people. They fell in love with how other people made them feel about themselves. And so, it was easy to get someone to love you—if you knew how they wanted to feel.

he knew that you couldn’t win an argument. Anything you fight against gets stronger.

When we narrate our experience, we take control of it. And in controlling the story of our past, we can create a better future.

“You cannot explain or come to understand the actions of deranged people. You can only accept what has happened and try to move forward, grateful that you have survived them.”