More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
His words were an example of how narcissists, with their lack of empathy, didn’t think others were impacted by life in the same way.
Sometimes she couldn’t help but feel she’d been a terrible friend, abandoning a place that had meant so much to her at one time. And yet the desert didn’t seem to care about her thoughtlessness. It remained the same, continuing to turn sunrises orange and sunsets red. It continued to sit quietly under fast-moving clouds and thunderstorms while allowing the wind to carry its sand away, lifting the grains high, taking them far beyond the desert. It had never waited for her to return, but it had always been there.
Because on the road, every day was an escape as the highway unfurled in front of you and rolled up behind you and you just kept moving, focusing on the needs of the day. Where to stop for gas, where to walk the dog, where to camp for the night, always moving toward or away from sunsets.
First the monsters come, then the indifference.
Their marriage had been years of loneliness, a life imitating life, she herself guilty of not sharing her feelings and making more attempts to speak of what had happened. Instead she’d carried it inside her, never allowing it to escape again, lest it be trivialized once more.
You have to change your focus from near to far, like opening a camera’s depth of field. You have to look at the sky and not at the ground. And once your brain finally makes the change, you’ll see it, really see it, and understand that the world is made up of all kinds of beauty, even in places that at first seem harsh.
Abuse came wrapped in different packages, and indifference to a partner’s pain was one of them.
There was no starting over for most people. That was a misconception. Unless a person’s memory could be erased, there were no fresh starts, only progression.
Even if you burned down a house where bad things had happened, the house would still be there in your mind, regardless.
Bad things were still happening in the world, and bad things had happened to both of them, but nature brought solace.
she and Daniel were only specks in the universe. Stardust.
“I cope by looking up and out. That’s where I find help. Nature never lets me down.”
