I’m Sorry You Feel That Way

by Rebecca Wait

And they don’t warn you, do they, exactly what to watch out for

in lovers? The big things, yes, like outright cruelty or violence, but what about the subtler dangers? For instance, the risk of choosing someone who never really knows you, but knows only the version of you they have created in their own head. Later on, Hanna will learn to divide people into two groups based on their understanding of others. First, there are the people with no particular agenda, who will take their cue from you, who will wait quietly to learn who you are. Then there is the other group, the people who will not wait, but who conjure up a personality for you out of odds and ends of their own: some bits of you, certainly, but mixed liberally with scraps of their own needs and prejudices.

‘I think,’ Hanna says, with the air of someone sharing a well-rehearsed world view, ‘that there are two types of people in the world: those who view life as a comedy with a few tragic moments, and those who view it as a tragedy with a few funny

moments.’

‘Do you think he didn’t love us at all?’ she says to Hanna. ‘I don’t know,’ Hanna says. She has been unusually quiet since they learned about the will. ‘I think he probably did. But it’s sort of irrelevant what you feel if you don’t act on it, isn’t it?’ She is frowning, looking away from Alice. ‘His kind of love wasn’t worth much in the end.’