The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

I needed to be alone so that he could come back.

Were faith and grief the same thing?

I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved.

This was demented, but so was I.

She was reaching a point at which she would need once again to be, if she was to recover, on her own. I determined to spend the summer reaching the same point.

When did he begin seeing himself as dead?

So many roads once; now so many cul de sacs.”

The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place.