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My strongest memory is not a memory. It’s something I imagined, then came to remember as if it had happened.
when the landscape is visible only as darkness and lighter darkness, and you feel the world around you more than you see it.
The song ended and I sat, paralyzed, as the next played, and the next, until the CD finished. The room felt lifeless without the music. I asked Tyler if we could listen to it again, and an hour later, when the music stopped, I begged him to restart it. It was very late, and the house quiet, when Tyler stood from his desk and pushed play, saying this was the last time.
Tyler stood to go. “There’s a world out there, Tara,” he said. “And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear.”
Napoleon felt no more real to me than Jean Valjean. I had never heard of either.
But I doubt the professor was much impressed by my observation that, “When you chop a chicken’s head off, you shouldn’t smile because you might get blood and feathers in your mouth.”
=))))))5
It’s comforting to think the defect is mine, because that means it is under my power.
Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself. My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.
It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you, I had written in my journal. But Shawn had more power over me than I could possibly have imagined. He had defined me to myself, and there’s no greater power than that.
“First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”
“She was just a cockney in a nice dress. Until she believed in herself, then it didn’t matter what dress she wore.”
When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?
But vindication has no power over guilt. No amount of anger or rage directed at others can subdue it, because guilt is never about them. Guilt is the fear of one’s own wretchedness. It has nothing to do with other people.
