A Marriage in Dog Years Quotes

“even though I sit in the last row with no one else around me, I am not alone. I feel the energy that has sidled up to the empty seat beside me, and I understand immediately that this is not a person but a thing called Grief. Like a masher trying to put the moves on, Grief inches closer and closer, and though I am terribly intimidated, I lie low, hold my breath, and continue to look straight ahead. The thing is, though, I know that none of this matters—I have finally been caught, and Grief, like the sound of the mourning dove, will continue to stalk me wherever I go. Because, no matter how clever my hiding space, from now on, I will always be in plain sight.”
― Nancy Balbirer, A Marriage in Dog Years

“Unfortunately, you don’t have the power to make him do anything. You’re not ‘the Douche Whisperer,’ Brenda.”
― Nancy Balbirer, A Marriage in Dog Years

“the loss of what one wishes had happened is just as painful, if not more so, than the loss of what has actually been.”
― Nancy Balbirer, A Marriage in Dog Years

“To love,” Stephen the Buddhist therapist would many years later frequently intone, “is to become aware of loss with further losses to come. This is why love makes us so anxious even when it is good.”
― Nancy Balbirer, A Marriage in Dog Years

“I find myself debating which is worse: pining for something you once had but that is now lost, or longing for something you are only just now realizing you never had but wanted and still want desperately?”
― Nancy Balbirer, A Marriage in Dog Years

“Like Anaïs Nin once wrote, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
― Nancy Balbirer, A Marriage in Dog Years