This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch: The Joy of Loving Something--Anything--Like Your Life Depends On It

by Tabitha Carvan

the essential conundrum of middle age comes down to this: “How can you be this dissatisfied when you have this much?

I realize that I too am tired of seeming. It’s exhausting. I’m tired of always trying to stay one step ahead of perceived criticism. I’m tired of the second-guessing, the diagnosing, the explaining, the hiding, the talking about what it all means.

We shoot our memories in the head, but it’s in self-defense, a preemptive strike against future denigration for loving the wrong thing, or loving it in the wrong way, or being the wrong kind of girl.

Embarrassment for who I was, or grief for her loss? It’s difficult to tell. From the outside, it kind of looks the same.

I don’t remember the parts of the story where I didn’t humiliate myself.

The “truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.” That’s a line from Jenny Offill’s novel Dept. of Speculation that I now know by heart.