Beautiful World, Where Are You

by Sally Rooney

If you get tired of walking you can always abandon me and turn back, I’m quite used to it. The walk, that is. Not being abandoned. I might be used to that as well, but it’s not the sort of thing I confess to strangers.

It’s probably very character-building, and by the time we see one another again I’ll have a really amazing personality.

Alice, she said, am I going to have to live in the real world one day? Without looking up, Alice snorted and said: Jesus no, absolutely not. Who told you that?

He told her that he loved her. Everything in life is incredibly beautiful, Eileen wrote in a message to Alice.

Of course I know in my brain that everything we tell ourselves about human civilisation is a lie. But imagine having to find out in real life.

It’s so hard to see the point sometimes, when the things in life I think are meaningful turn out to mean nothing, and the people who are supposed to love me don’t.

I keep encountering this person, who is myself, and I hate her with all my energy.

No, I don’t love coming home to an empty house, he said. And as fantasies go, I don’t really object to being waited on hand and foot. It’s just not something I would expect from a life partner. Oh, I’m offending your feminist principles. I’ll stop.

Really my problem is that I’m annoyed at everyone else for not having all the answers, when I also have none.

For me I think it’s more that I fall in love very intensely.

Just because I go on dates doesn’t mean people go around falling in love with me.

I also feel certain it’s better to be deeply loved (which you are) than widely liked (which you probably also are! but I won’t labour the point).