Meredith > Recent Status Updates

Mummy: What a strange child you are! You always were. Had to love, that's what you are. Very hard to love ... All alone, aren't you? No one to talk to, no one to play with. And it's your own fault. Strange, sad little Eleanor.
Me: I see you, Eleanor!

Eleanor: People don't like thees facts, but I can't help that. If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.

Eleanor: These days, loneliness is the new cancer — a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.

Eleanor: By careful observation from the sidelines, I'd worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don't find funny, do things they don't particularly want to do with people whose company they don't particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided years ago that if the choice was between that and flying solo, I'd fly solo.