Guilt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Some of the boys I met were aware that they’d crossed lines, but, especially when their actions fell short of forcible rape, they weren’t sure how to address it. Reza, the sophomore at a Boston college I spoke with in chapter two, counted nine high school hookups in which he’d found himself in what he described as “a gray area.” One time, he recalled, a girl at a party told him she’d taken a prescription drug that made her woozy, but he chose to ignore that. “It was just in one ear and out the other. I didn’t think about it at all,” he said. He ended up touching her breast under a blanket. “She was like, ‘Yes! Yes!’ But when she got up, she couldn’t stand straight. And I was like, ‘Shit.’” When he texted her the next day to apologize, she didn’t remember the encounter and told him not to tell her what had happened. “I felt awful,” he said. “I still do. But you’re trying to work it out: How aggressive is too aggressive? How much is too much? What counts as okay? My parents always told [me], ‘Respect women!’ But that’s kind of like telling someone who’s learning to drive not to run over any little old ladies and then handing him the car keys. Well, of course, you think you’re not going to run over an old lady. But you still don’t know how to drive.” Sometimes, listening to guys like Reza, I found myself privately dismissing their transgressions as no big deal. Because in some ways they weren’t: they were the classic teenage fumbling of someone trying to learn the rules. But what if that learning curve comes at girls’ expense? Maybe, as a woman myself, my standards were warped by my own inevitable experiences of violation. I’m not talking about rape, but the years of catcalling or being groped on the subway or swatting men’s hands away at a party or staying “safe” on a date. Those were not “microaggressions”: they were actual aggression, the kind to which one becomes more or less inured. Looking back, I feel lucky that I didn’t endure worse. So perhaps that leads me to reflexively dismiss or excuse misconduct up to a certain threshold, though I couldn’t tell you what that threshold is or how it compares to someone else’s. I still wouldn’t want Reza punished, at least based on his accounts of what happened, but I’m glad he’s reflecting on his behavior and, hopefully, growing as a result.

• From Another Country (1962)

  And she had bound him to her; he had been her salvation; and here he was. She did not regret it for herself and yet she began to wonder if there were not something in it to be regretted, something she had done to Richard which Richard did not see. “No,” she said, faintly. And then, irrepressibly, “But I wouldn’t have had to try.” “What do you mean by that?” “I mean”—he was watching her; she sat down again, playing with the glass of whiskey—“a man meets a woman. And he needs her. But she uses this need against him, she uses it to undermine him. And it’s easy. Women don’t see men the way men want to be seen. They see all the tender places, all the places where blood could flow.” She finished the whiskey. “Do you see what I mean?” “No,” he said, frankly, “I don’t. I don’t believe all this female intuition shit. It’s something women have dreamed up.” “You can say that—and in such a tone!” She mimicked him: “Something women have dreamed up. But I can’t say that—what men have ‘dreamed up’ is all there is, the world they’ve dreamed up is the world.” He laughed. She subsided. “Well. It’s true.” “What a funny girl you are,” he said. “You’ve got a bad case of penis envy.” “So do most men,” she said, sharply, and he laughed. “All I meant, anyway,” she said, soberly, “is that I had to try to fit myself around you and not try to make you fit around me. That’s all. And it hasn’t been easy.” “No.” “No. Because I love you.” “Ah!” he said, and laughed aloud, “you are a funny girl. I love you, too, you know that.” “I hope you do,” she said. “You know me so well and you don’t know that? What happened to all that intuition, all that—specialized—point of view?” “Beyond a certain point,” she said, with a sullen smile, “it doesn’t seem to work so well.” He pulled her up from the table and put both arms around her, bending his cheek to her hair. “What point is that, my darling?” Everything, his breath in her hair, his arms, his chest, his odor—was familiar, confining, unutterably dear. She turned her head slightly to look out of the kitchen window. “Love,” she said, and watched the cold sunlight. She thought of the cold river and of the dead black boy, their friend. She closed her eyes. “Love,” she said, again, “love.” Richard stayed with the children Saturday, while Cass and Vivaldo went uptown to Rufus’ funeral. She did not want to go but she could not refuse Vivaldo, who knew that he had to be there but dreaded being there alone.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  “Possibly,” he said. He asked me a few more questions about how quickly he would be able to switch time on and off. Then he said, “No, what I would probably do is hide out so that I could watch couples I knew. I’d be very curious to see that.” His idea surprised me, since I have almost no active interest in seeing couples I know have sex, or seeing couples at all. I have of course seen it from time to time, but only in pursuit of other sights or experiences. After Rhody broke up with me, in part over the very issue of time-perversion, she started going out with an older divorced man, and I did hide out behind the tired gold wing chair in her bedroom and watch them have sex once or twice (well, six times)—and the last time in fact I did a very very wrong thing. Rhody was on her knees, with her ass way up in the air, licking and biting the pillowcase of the pillow she held, which was our favorite way for a while, and I felt violated and hurt that she would be doing this now with him, with this divorced consultant who looked like the “before” sketch in a NordicTrack ad, so I stopped time with my fingernail clipper (each time I snipped a fingernail, time toggled) and pulled the guy off her and out of her and hauled him to the garage, where I tied him securely to a piece of plywood; then I stationed myself in exactly the same position that he had been in, with my cock inside Rhody, and clipped time on, and was pleased to hear her surprised change of tone: “Oh yeah! Wow! That’s good! Like that!” I pulled out and let my cock rest against her tailbone and pressed down on it with the heel of my hand, which was something we used to do a lot that she liked, because when I shot she liked to feel the come-tangents reach up her back. I could sense her immediate surprise as I did this—Could it be?—and just before she looked back to see if it was really me, I stopped everything and got the divorced guy out of the garage and put him back where he had been and stuffed what was left of his erection back in. “What’s wrong?” Rhody said, as soon as I clipped time on. “Nothing,” said the divorced man. He tried to pretend to be fucking her with abandon, but he was almost completely limp by now. “Something’s wrong,” said Rhody. “What’s wrong?” “I had the strangest hallucination,” he said. “I thought I was tied up against a board, looking up at the skis in the ceiling of the garage. Beyond weird. Sorry, baby.”

• From The Fermata (1994)

  “Both,” she said. “God, I’m so fucking sick of liars and sneaks and cheats and weirdos. God.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed. “Last year I was in a relationship with a guy for two months, and it turned out that he was married. He simply forgot to tell me that he had a nuclear family in Washington, D.C. And now this.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “But can I say that right now I’m the opposite of the married guy? I’m trying not to deceive you. I’m telling you right out that, yes, I took some of your clothes off. I assumed you wouldn’t mind. If I had known as a definite fact beforehand that you would have minded, I wouldn’t have done it. I know I was probably deluding myself. You looked wonderful. Your pubic hair was like a bicycle seat.” “Oh Jesus. When was this?” She looked up at me, as if establishing the date would help. I took off my glasses and put my hands over my eyes to think. “It’s hard for me to get dates right, because I’ve been spending so much time lately in the Fold, writing. It was the first week I worked at MassBank. You were walking across the floor one time wearing that blue-gray knit dress.” I put my glasses back on, which made me remember that she had said back then that she liked my glasses. I felt there was still hope. “That is a really nifty dress. You had your hair in a French braid, if that’s what they’re called. You were carrying some files. And I just wanted to see more of you. What can I say?” “Arno, wouldn’t it have been just as easy to ask me out?” “No! It was very, very hard to ask you out today. It’s just not something I do lightly.” “Tell me exactly what happened,” she said. “When I took off your clothes? Do you really want to hear this?” “No, it’s hideous, but go on.” “Well—I just snapped my fingers and got everything to stop and I scooted over to you in my chair and lifted up your dress. It was so light, it felt so good, the knit. I lifted it up over your pantyhose and over your hips and made a sort of knot in it at your waist. Your legs felt really warm through the pantyhose. Pantyhose material is strange stuff, like a substance from another planet, unpleasant when you first touch it, and yet the warmth of your skin radiates through it and humanizes it. So I kind of whisked my hands over your legs and I felt your hipbones, and before you know it, I had pulled your pantyhose down and I had my hand in your pubic hair.” “ ‘Before I know it’ is right,” said Joyce, pointing her knife at me. “I didn’t know it, Arno. I didn’t have a clue that your hand was in my pubic hair. Doesn’t that trouble you?”

• From The Fermata (1994)

  “What do you have in your hand?” she asked, undoing my fingers. “This thing? It’s just a sort of charm.” She looked at the burned-out rocker-switch, which I stupidly hadn’t gotten rid of during our orgasm. “You were holding on to this the whole time?” she said, looking at me uncomprehendingly. “I don’t think the whole time,” I said. “Where did it come from? I don’t understand.” “Well,” I said, playing for time, “it’s just that—I remembered I had a bunch of rocker-switches in my pants pocket and grabbed one when I was going at you from behind. That was great, by the way.” I needed twenty minutes or so to think about how I should answer her, and whether I should tell her about the Fold, but I couldn’t very well reach for another rocker-switch while she lay on her side, propped on one elbow, looking at me with such a troubled expression. I had to go with my flash assessment, which was that this was not in fact the time to tell her about my Fold-life after all. I disliked how strange I must be appearing to her. She said, “While we were making love, you reached in these pants and pulled out a piece of electrical equipment and held on to it? Why?” Now she was sitting up, wanting very much to get an explanation from me that would clear everything up. Her breasts looked aggrieved. “It’s hard to explain,” I said. “I guess I wanted to imagine that I was an android.” I laughed sheepishly to confirm my fabrication. “An invincible hard-body android. It’s stupid, I know.” I felt despair at how ridiculous this explanation sounded, but I couldn’t bring myself to launch into the truth, fearing that she would take it poorly. “I hate these stupid condoms,” I said fussily, tying a knot in the one we had just used. Rhody shook her head. “I’m not very comfortable with this, Arno. I really didn’t plan to be fucked by an electric motor this afternoon.” “I know. I’m sorry.” I hugged her guiltily. She lay on her back, thinking. “Let me ask you this,” she then said. “Is your idea of the perfect life to be able to stop time anytime you want and take off women’s clothes on the subway and feel their breasts?” “I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “You think that I’m turning out to be some kind of techno-sex nutcase.” “Well? No, I’m just a little surprised at all this. First you tell me this long story about a piano chord, insisting that I must find aspects of the idea sexually exciting, and now you hold this thing in your hand—what is it?” “It’s just a plain-vanilla on-off switch, a rocker-switch,” I said. I tried mild indignation. “It’s nothing! Forget it. It’s just a little sixteen-amp rocker-switch.”

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Or maybe I just think it is wrong to cheat and steal and so don’t do it. When I was desperate for money a few years ago and I found a way to drop into the Fold by writing a certain mathematical formula on a scrap of paper, I gave serious thought to walking around the city stealing one dollar from every open cash register. It would have taken me months to amass a few thousand dollars, so I would have worked for my loot in a sense, and I would have been stealing a trifling amount from each business. But I found that there was something horrible about the sensation of pulling a dollar bill that was not mine from under that springy clamp that held it down with its own species. There was misery in it, not excitement. I was behind the glove counter at Filene’s trying to steal my very first dollar and I could not do it. Instead, I stood behind the motionless glove salesperson, a woman of twenty or so, very close to her, and squeezed her hard, so that I fancied I could feel the tiny cysts in her breasts as well as the ribs beneath her shirt. (I always find that it is good for me to hug a woman like this because when I feel her ribs I know she is human. Ribs inspire pity and tenderness and the sense that we are all in the same sparred boat.) She was an Italian woman, I think, who looked as if she had taken a few courses in beauty school and had had her natural esthetic sense injured by the experience. She wore a big engagement ring with an oblong diamond. She was a person who would never be physically attracted to a person like me, just as I would never be physically attracted by a person like her. This total incompatibility made me able to feel a surge of momentary sympathy for her which was almost like an infatuation.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I would condemn in the strongest terms anyone else who did what I have done. But the thing is, I did it, I did it, and I know myself, I know that I mean no harm, I mean well. I want simply to know what every woman looks like and feels like. I mean only to appreciate what the ribs of a complete stranger feel like under my hands, or to hold some hair I haven’t held before, or to come in someone’s face while she is paused in her own orgasm. And since in the Fermata I happen to be able to act on these wants without troubling her—without shaming or frightening her or interrupting what she is doing or thinking, simply by stopping the entire known universe for a few minutes or hours, I feel that what I’m doing isn’t wrong enough for me to override my irresistible desire to do it. In fact, maybe what I’m doing is straightforwardly right and good! I never ogle or leer on sidewalks. The Fold has permitted me to perfect my surreptitiousness. Maybe every single woman I have stripped, if she knew me, if she could know now what my thoughts had been as I unzipped her dress and undid her bra, would want me to have stripped her and sucked her breasts and understood her body as it truly deserved to be understood.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  If only I had tried a little harder, concentrated just that little bit more, or found more interesting topics for meditation. The quality of a nun’s commitment was reflected in the quality of her prayer. And how could I hope to sense God’s presence when I continually broke the silence, frequently had uncharitable thoughts, and above all, constantly yearned for human affection and wept when reprimanded? It was, of course, a vicious circle. The emptier my prayers, the more I sought consolation in mundane things and in people. Round and round. Then there were my secret doubts. Even though I tried to tiptoe gingerly around difficult articles of faith, I could not stop wondering whether the Virgin Mary really had been conceived without original sin and been taken up body and soul into heaven after her death. How did anybody know that Jesus was God? And was there even a God out there at all? Perhaps that was why I never encountered him in prayer? As I knelt in the chapel, watching my sisters kneeling quietly with their heads bowed contemplatively in their hands, I would sometimes wonder whether it wasn’t a bit like the emperor’s new clothes: nobody ever experienced God but nobody dared to admit it. And then I would mentally shake myself. How could God reveal himself to a nun who harbored these shocking doubts? And so came the morning when, just a few days after I had been dispensed from my vows, my alarm clock rang at 6 a.m. and instead of getting up and walking down the road to Saint Aloysius’s Church for early Mass, I simply switched it off and went back to sleep. For seven years, each day had begun with prayer and Eucharist, but now there seemed no point in any of that. I would still go to Mass on Sundays, of course, because this was obligatory, binding upon all Catholics. Leaving the church as well as the convent was at present a step too far. But the very idea of kneeling silently in a darkened church—yet again—filled me with immense fatigue. I cannot do that anymore, I told myself wearily that morning; I simply cannot do it. The accumulated failure had left me feeling not merely exhausted but also slightly sick. I had tried, I told myself as I turned over and faced the whitewashed brick wall of my cheerful college room. I had not been the best nun in the world, but I had honestly done my best, and my superiors had all tried to help me. But it was just no good. If God did exist, he clearly wanted nothing to do with me, and right now I couldn’t blame him. There was something in me that was proof against religion, closed to the divine. Let it go, I told myself sleepily. Don’t beat yourself up anymore.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Her mother soon followed her to the landing.‘My dear!’ she called, ‘you’re home, and thank goodness! We’ve been wondering ourselves silly - haven’t we, love ? - about where you might’ve got to. Gracie was fretted near half to death, poor soul, but I said to her: “Don’t you worry about Nancy, girl; Nancy will’ve found some friend to take her in, or missed the last bus home, and passed the night in some rooming-house. Nancy will be back all right, tomorrow, you wait and see.”’ As she spoke she came slowly down the stairs, until at last we were quite level. She gazed at me with real affection; but there was a hint of reproach, I thought, in her words. I felt even more guilty about what I must tell her - but also slightly resentful. I was not her daughter, nor was I Gracie’s sweetheart. I owed them nothing - I told myself - but my rent.Now I drew carefully away from Grace, and nodded to her mother. I said, ‘You’re right, I did meet a friend. A very old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. What a surprise it was, to meet her! She has rooms over in Kilburn. It was too far to come back so late.’ The story sounded hollow to me, but Mrs Milne seemed pleased enough with it.‘There now, Gracie,’ she said, ‘what did I tell you? Now, just you run downstairs and put the kettle on. Nancy’ll be wanting a bit of tea, I don’t doubt.’ She smiled at me again, while Gracie dutifully lumbered off; then she headed back up the stairs, and I followed.‘The thing is, Mrs Milne,’ I began, ‘this friend of mine, she’s in a bit of a state. You see her room-mate up and moved out last week’ - Mrs Milne checked slightly, then stepped steadily on - ‘and she can’t replace her; and she can’t afford all the rent herself, she has only a little part-time work in a milliner‘s, poor thing ...’ We had reached the parlour. Mrs Milne turned to face me, and her eyes were troubled.‘That is a shame,’ she said feelingly. ‘A good roomer is hard to find, these days, that I do know. That’s why - and I’ve told you so before, you know I have - that’s why me and Gracie’ve been so glad to have you with us. Why, if you was ever to leave us, Nance -’ This seemed the worst possible way for me to tell her, yet I had to speak.‘Oh, don’t say that, Mrs M!’ I said lightly. ‘For you see, I’m sorry to say I shall be leaving you. This friend of mine has asked me and, well, I said I would take the other girl’s place - just to help her out, you know ...’

• From Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (2017)

  So what’s the problem with a little over-responsibility? Can you have too much of a good thing? Oh, can we ever! My daughter Rose has always been disorganized and forgetful. When she was growing up, mornings were her worst time. She would get up a half hour before the bus, eat a leisurely breakfast, then rush around at the last minute getting ready for school. Naturally she forgot things like her coat, her lunch, or her homework, and I made myself crazy trying to “help” her. I pushed, I reminded, I scolded. Worst of all, when I got the inevitable call from her that she had left an important assignment at home and needed it desperately or else she would get a failing grade, I drove it to school! To some this may look like good parenting. When we love someone, we should protect her from bad things happening, shouldn’t we? That’s the cultural assumption we share, but the truth was that for Rose to ever understand her own responsibilities and what she’d need to do to survive and thrive, she would have to suffer the consequences of her own actions. She’d have to get an “F,” possibly even flunk the course. That was the only way she would learn, but I was too over-responsible to allow her do it.

• From Wild (2012)

  We’d married so young, so uncharacteristically, even our parents asked why we couldn’t just live together. We couldn’t just live together, even though I was only nineteen and he twenty-one. We were too wildly in love and we believed we had to do something wild to demonstrate that, so we did the wildest thing we could think of and got married. But even married, we didn’t think of ourselves as married people—we were monogamous, but we had no intention of settling down. We packed our bicycles into boxes and flew with them to Ireland, where a month later, I turned twenty. We rented a flat in Galway and then changed our minds and moved to Dublin and got a matching pair of restaurant jobs—he in a pizza place, me in a vegetarian café. Four months later, we moved to London and walked the streets so destitute we searched for coins on the sidewalk. Eventually, we returned home, and not long after that my mother died and we did all the things that we did that led us here, to Val’s office. Paul and I had clutched each other’s hands beneath the table, watching Val as she methodically examined our do-it-yourself no-fault divorce documents. She inspected one page and then the next, and on and on through fifty or sixty, making sure we’d gotten everything right. I felt a kind of loyalty rear up in me as she did this, unified with Paul against whatever contrary claim she might make, as if we were applying to be together for the rest of our lives instead of the opposite. “It all looks good,” she said at last, giving us a reticent smile. And then she went back through the pages again, at a brisker clip this time, pressing her giant notary public stamp against some and sliding dozens of others across the table for us to sign. “I love him,” I blurted when we were nearly through, my eyes filling with tears. I thought about pulling up my sleeve and showing her the square of gauze that covered my brand-new horse tattoo, as proof, but I only stammered on. “I mean, this is not for lack of love, just so you know. I love him and he loves me …” I looked at Paul, waiting for him to interject and agree and declare his love too, but he remained silent. “Just so you know,” I repeated. “So you won’t get the wrong idea.” “I know,” Val said, and pushed the pink hank of her hair aside so I could see her eyes fluttering nervously from the papers up to me and then down to the papers again. “And it’s all my fault,” I said, my voice swelling and shaking. “He didn’t do anything. I’m the one. I broke my own heart.”

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But I could no more do that now than run naked down the cloister. Not only would I never have dared to cross Mother Walter—and indeed, I hastily reminded myself, Sister Mary Jonathan was breaking several rules at once—but I wouldn’t be able to think like that anymore. I no longer had it in me. But Sister Mary Jonathan did. “The guitar might give God a chance,” she countered brightly. “People might come to listen and then find something more.” “Really, Sister!” Mother’s voice was thunderous. “I would have thought that you of all people would understand.” Sister Mary Jonathan was very musical. “Do you think God needs a guitar ”— she uttered the word as though it were an obscenity—“to give him a chance?” Sister was undeterred. “But surely Jesus would have used a guitar, if he’d been alive today? ” “Nonsense, Sister! I’ve never heard such rubbish! He would have done no such thing!” I had to bend my head quickly over the stocking that I was darning to hide an involuntary smile. I had a sudden mental picture of Jesus standing on a hill in Galilee, surrounded by his Jewish audience, singing plainsong. He looked pretty silly. But Mother Walter had spotted me. “I am glad that you find this amusing, Sister,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “I find it extremely sad. Sister Mary Jonathan has committed a serious fault against obedience and against charity, by spoiling recreation for everybody!” That had been the end of the matter, though when Mother wasn’t looking, Sister Mary Jonathan had winked at me and pulled a face. With hindsight, that complicity had been prophetic. She had left the order shortly before I had. She had fallen in love with a young Jesuit with whom she was studying at London University. Somehow she had held on to herself better than I. I was quite sure that she would not find it difficult to tell anybody what she thought. My problem, as I wrestled with my highly unsatisfactory essay for Dr. Brentwood Smyth, was that I had no thoughts of my own at all. Every time the frail shoots of a potentially subversive idea had broken ground, I had stamped on them so firmly that they tended not to come anymore. True, at the very end of my religious life I had argued with Mother Praeterita, my Oxford superior, but the ideas I used against her had not been mine. I was simply parroting books and articles that I had read. It seemed that I could no longer operate as an intellectual free agent. You can probably abuse your mind and do it irrevocable harm, just as you can damage your body by feeding it the wrong kind of food, depriving it of exercise, or forcing your limbs into a constricting straitjacket. My brain had been bound as tightly as the feet of a Chinese woman, and I had read that when the bandages were taken off, the pain was excruciating.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  If only I had tried a little harder, concentrated just that little bit more, or found more interesting topics for meditation. The quality of a nun’s commitment was reflected in the quality of her prayer. And how could I hope to sense God’s presence when I continually broke the silence, frequently had uncharitable thoughts, and above all, constantly yearned for human affection and wept when reprimanded? It was, of course, a vicious circle. The emptier my prayers, the more I sought consolation in mundane things and in people. Round and round. Then there were my secret doubts. Even though I tried to tiptoe gingerly around difficult articles of faith, I could not stop wondering whether the Virgin Mary really had been conceived without original sin and been taken up body and soul into heaven after her death. How did anybody know that Jesus was God? And was there even a God out there at all? Perhaps that was why I never encountered him in prayer? As I knelt in the chapel, watching my sisters kneeling quietly with their heads bowed contemplatively in their hands, I would sometimes wonder whether it wasn’t a bit like the emperor’s new clothes: nobody ever experienced God but nobody dared to admit it. And then I would mentally shake myself. How could God reveal himself to a nun who harbored these shocking doubts? And so came the morning when, just a few days after I had been dispensed from my vows, my alarm clock rang at 6 a.m. and instead of getting up and walking down the road to Saint Aloysius’s Church for early Mass, I simply switched it off and went back to sleep. For seven years, each day had begun with prayer and Eucharist, but now there seemed no point in any of that. I would still go to Mass on Sundays, of course, because this was obligatory, binding upon all Catholics. Leaving the church as well as the convent was at present a step too far. But the very idea of kneeling silently in a darkened church—yet again—filled me with immense fatigue. I cannot do that anymore, I told myself wearily that morning; I simply cannot do it. The accumulated failure had left me feeling not merely exhausted but also slightly sick. I had tried, I told myself as I turned over and faced the whitewashed brick wall of my cheerful college room. I had not been the best nun in the world, but I had honestly done my best, and my superiors had all tried to help me. But it was just no good. If God did exist, he clearly wanted nothing to do with me, and right now I couldn’t blame him. There was something in me that was proof against religion, closed to the divine. Let it go, I told myself sleepily. Don’t beat yourself up anymore.

• From Bold Move

  I asked him to explain the apparent contradiction. Ricardo sighed and went on to describe the Friday afternoon before we met, which he told me was a clear example of why he was stuck. He was running late at work, and was anxiously checking the time, as 4:30 p.m. was the cutoff for school pickup. Since his wife had asked for the divorce, they were still sharing the household and were dividing responsibilities for the kids 50/50. It is important to note that Ricardo was a VP at a financial company. He loved his high-profile job and the chance to excel in a difficult field. On that Friday afternoon in question, Ricardo was in the midst of negotiating a potentially huge deal with a new client. He had been working to bring this client—let’s call him Mark—to his firm for a couple of years, and Mark had finally decided to move all his investments to Ricardo’s firm. This would represent a huge win for the company, not to mention an incredible bonus at the end of the year, which Ricardo now needed due to the impending divorce. Ricardo was ready to get out of the office to go pick up his kids, feeling on top of the world, when his office phone rang. It was Mark. Ricardo’s heart sank immediately. What if Mark was having second thoughts that needed to be massaged? If he didn’t answer that call, he could potentially lose Mark’s business. But if he did answer it, he would be late to pick up his children. In a quick calculation, Ricardo picked up the phone as he sent a quick text to his wife to ask her if she could pick up the kids. This was a huge ask at the time, as their relationship had become quite strained, and even small conflicts tended to boil over into full-blown arguments. Ricardo knew that in prioritizing work, he would be taking a risk vis-à-vis his wife, but this was such a big potential new client that he felt like there was no other choice: he needed to put work first; that was the fire burning hot in front of him. But as he greeted Mark, all he could focus on was the feeling of dread he had. “So what happened next?” I asked Ricardo. “Well, as it turned out, my wife”—he looked sad as he said the word—“was also in a meeting at work and didn’t see my messages, so the kids were stranded at school. Thankfully not alone, because their teachers stayed with them for an extra twenty minutes, but man, they were furious with me when I got them.” Ricardo’s eyes welled with tears. “It’s not like I was consciously choosing work over my family! Sometimes these things just happen, and I end up always choosing what feels most pressing in the moment. Honestly, I think that’s why my wife is leaving me.

• From Wild (2012)

  I didn’t call Eddie to ask why he hadn’t followed through on what we’d decided. I called my mother’s father in Alabama instead. He’d been a horseman all his life. We talked for an hour about Lady. He asked me one question after another, and by the end of our conversation he was adamant that it was time to put her down. I told him I’d sleep on it. The next morning the phone rang shortly after dawn. It wasn’t my grandfather calling to wish me a merry Christmas. It was my grandfather calling to implore me to act now. To let Lady die naturally was cruel and inhumane, he insisted, and I knew he was right. I also knew that it was up to me to make sure it was done. I didn’t have money to pay for the veterinarian to come out and give her an injection, and even if I did, it was Christmas and I doubted he would come. My grandfather described to me in specific detail how to shoot a horse. When I expressed trepidation, he assured me this was the way it had been done for years. I also worried about what to do with Lady’s corpse. The ground was so deeply frozen that burial was impossible. “Leave her,” he instructed. “The coyotes will drag her away.” “What should I do?” I cried to Paul after I hung up the phone. We didn’t know it, but it was our last Christmas together. A couple of months later, I’d tell him about my infidelities and he’d move out. By the time Christmas came again we were discussing divorce. “Do what you think is right,” he said on that Christmas morning. We were sitting at the kitchen table—its every crack and groove familiar to me, and yet it seemed as if I were as far as I could be from home, alone on an ice floe. “I don’t know what’s right,” I said, though I did. I knew exactly what I had to do. It was what I’d had to do so many times now: choose the best of two horrible things. But I couldn’t do it without my brother. Paul and I had shot a gun before—Leif had taught us both the previous winter—but neither of us could do it with any confidence. Leif wasn’t an avid hunter, but at least he’d done it often enough that he knew what he was doing. When I called him, he agreed to drive home that evening. In the morning, we discussed in detail what we’d do. I told him everything our grandfather had told me. “Okay,” he said. “Get her ready.” Outside, the sun was bright, the sky crystal blue. By eleven it had warmed to 17 degrees below zero. We bundled ourselves in layers of clothes. It was so cold the trees were cracking open, freezing and exploding in great bursts that I’d heard from my bed the sleepless night before.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  Sometimes he reached down for the bottle an hour later, forgetting what it was full of. We laughed when he spat the piss out, the wall a mosaic of stains. Ben and I stood on the gnawed edges of the hole and looked down into its cavity, its ribs: Inside the hole were discarded two-by-fours. One time we saw Ben’s father stand here at the edge and pee into the hole, competing with the sky to see whose rain reached the deepest roots. Circling its perimeter, I told Ben the house didn’t seem any closer to done. The hole was just deepening because her father didn’t know what else to do, and down is the only direction that doesn’t require any imagining. She slapped me, her palm spiked with sweat. I touched my face with my fingertips, the skin flaring. Ben stepped back from me and looked at her hand like it was a hornet, like she was the one stung by it. We stood apart, facing each other. The hole laid behind her like a shadow, and for a second I wondered if that was the true shape of her. Ben said I shouldn’t talk about other people’s fathers when my own was a myth, a story gone so sour that nobody wanted to tell it. My tail descended to defend me, swinging between my legs. I said she didn’t know anything about my father or what I’d done to him. My many mothers and what I’d do for them. Mothers ago, I was a beast. I stalked whole countries to eat. I plotted their shores with my teeth. Ben said I should stop lying. Before she could say anything else, my tail whipped forward, shifting me onto my toes. I obeyed its weight and moved toward her, pushing Ben with both my hands. Ben stumbled and went backward into the hole, landing on the pyre of two-by-fours. The breath tore out of her mouth. I didn’t remember calling down to her, but Ben said I did, and that’s how her father heard and brought his ladder, bringing Ben back up in a mulch sack. He laid her on the soil and slapped her face till her eyes came on again. I watched while my tail retracted, curled and beating at my lower back. That week, I stood again at the hem of the hole and begged her to push me in. Do it, I said. Ben wore a bandage around her ribs to make sure the bones clasped back together in the correct place. I’d watched her father cut it from a bedsheet. I spoke with my back to her, waiting for her hands to decide I was right, that I was a species she didn’t recognize. But she never did it.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  This did not mean that Mother Greta did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, or that she had lost her faith. But she had studied at the prestigious Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium and knew that the kind of essay I had written was no longer regarded as a respectable intellectual exercise. A careful study of the resurrection stories in the gospels, which consistently contradict one another, shows that these were not factual accounts that could ever satisfy a modern historian, but mythical attempts to describe the religious convictions of the early Christians, who had experienced the risen Jesus as a dynamic presence in their own lives and had made a similar spiritual passage from death to life. As I stared wordlessly back at Mother Greta, I knew that, if it had been up to her, she would have scrapped this course in apologetics and introduced us to a more fruitful study of the New Testament. But, like any nun, she was bound by the orders of her superiors. What I had written was not true, because the insights of faith are not amenable to rational or historical analysis. Even at this early stage, in a confused, incoherent way, I knew this, and Mother Greta knew that I knew it. It was a sobering moment, and when I look back now on that scene in the postulantship, with the autumn sun coming through the window, the older nun mentally tired and demoralized, while the postulant gazed at her blankly, both of us deliberately turning our minds away from the light, I wonder what on earth we all thought we were doing. I had been set a quite pointless task. For a week, while preparing my essay, writing it and learning how to dispose of the obvious problems with various mental sleights of hand, I had been doing something perverse. I had been telling an elaborate lie. I had deflected the natural healthy bias of my mind from a truth that was staring me in the face and forced it to deny what should have been as clear as day. Years later, while I was having my breakdown, I learned that Mother Greta had been very anxious indeed about the way we were being trained, had voiced her disapproval, and had been overruled. What had our superiors been about, and why did I not tear up that dishonest piece of work, or at least argue with Mother Greta? I had simply gone along with the whole unholy muddle. But I was only eighteen years old and this had not been an isolated incident.

• From Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (2017)

  done something wrong. I am not responsible for other people’s emotions. Expansive strategies for those with an over-responsible mind-set can sound selfish, especially in a culture that values loyalty and family. But being responsible for your own health and well-being is not being selfish. In fact, it is your primary duty. In an airplane emergency you put on your own oxygen mask first, before your child’s, for good reason. If you are depleted, you will be unable to help those you love even when they genuinely need and deserve your help. Other traps that over-responsible mind-sets pull us into are pointing out others’ poor choices to them, stepping up when there’s a task nobody’s willing to do, and failing to set limits with those who disrespect or take advantage of us. While these strategies may make you feel better in the short run, you cannot grow by continuing to use them. Employing strategies that take responsibility for yourself first will reinforce a healthier, more sustainable mind-set, one that will help you cultivate health and peace of mind regardless of how others are doing. When you stop trying to control others, and offer them compassion instead, they will feel the difference. In time they will be more likely to accept the support you have to give them. Here are a few examples of expansive alternatives to some common over-responsible beliefs of the monkey mind-set. Monkey Mind-set: I believe that if someone I care about is not making a good choice, it is my responsibility to do something about it. If I don’t, I am partly responsible for the consequence. Expansive Mind-set: I believe that people are responsible for their own lives and the choices they make. Consequences of their actions are not my fault. Monkey Mind-set: If I set a limit with someone or state a preference, I feel responsible for the other person’s feelings. Expansive Mind-set: When I set a limit or state a preference, I can be sensitive to others’ feelings without taking responsibility for them. Monkey Mind-set: If others do not do their fair share of the work, it is my responsibility to take up the slack.

• From Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (2017)

  Offer others help in solving their problems. Consider helping only when someone asks for it. Necessary Feelings: Guilt, anxiety, frustration, anger, and sadness Opportunity: Lack of assertiveness Values: Authenticity, Courage, Respect, Health Monkey Mind-set I am responsible for other people’s feelings. If I set a limit and it upsets another, I’m at fault. If others don’t agree with me, I’m to blame. Expansive Mind-set It is not my responsibility to keep people happy at the expense of expressing myself. Saying no and setting limits is part of good self-- care. If people become upset with me, it does not mean it is my fault or that I am responsible for their feelings. Safety Strategies Put others’ needs and wants before mine. If someone is displeased with me, back down. If others disagree with me, change my opinion. Expansive Strategies Express what I want to do. Say no to something every day. Give an opinion that I think others do not hold. Necessary Feelings: Guilt, anxiety, frustration, anger, and sadness Opportunity: Taking on more than your fair share and having poor self-care Values: Self-Acceptance, Health, Growth, Compassion, Courage Monkey Mind-set If others do not step up, I must do something. If it’s not getting done right, I must step in. Once everything’s done I can do what I want. After everyone’s cared for I can take care of me. Expansive Mind-set If others don’t step up, I am not at fault. Everything does not need to be done my way. “Everything” is never done, so don’t wait for that. Taking care of myself is my first obligation. Safety Strategies Volunteer to do things when others are not doing them. Step in for others struggling with a task. Put other people’s needs first. Put off taking care of myself. Expansive Strategies Do not volunteer and if asked politely decline. Allow others to struggle and to learn from it. Devote five minutes to self-care before responding to anything you think needs to get done. Necessary Feelings: Irritation, frustration, anxiety, and guilt

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Prayer comes naturally to humans. The practice of praying is present in religions the world over. Prayer is simply talking, after all. Humans learn to talk early in life and then never really shut up. It only makes sense we would talk to God too. Since prayer is natural, if we aren’t praying regularly, there is usually a reason. If we want to pray more, we need to figure out what is getting in the way. Often, though, we don’t take the time to figure out what the obstacle is. We just feel guilty for not praying more. Why do we feel guilty? Because we know we should pray more. We’ve heard about prayer, read about prayer, maybe even tried prayer. We might even really like praying. But we just don’t do it as often as we wish we would or know we should. We find ourselves praying when we need something, of course. But then we feel guilty about only talking to God when we have a request. Like the rich uncle you never think about until you need someone to cosign on an apartment lease. The good news is that God does not shame us for our lack of prayer. Why would He? Prayer is for us, not for Him. If we don’t pray, God isn’t the one missing out. I think He misses us, of course, but it’s not like our lack of prayer can take anything away from an infinite God. So if you aren’t praying as much as you’d like to, remember that God is not mad at you, and you don’t need to shame yourself. Finding and eliminating obstacles to prayer is not about shame. When you ask yourself why you aren’t praying more, the goal is not to beat yourself over the head with a Bible, obsess over all the things you’re doing wrong, or tell yourself that you don’t measure up. The goal is to grow in understanding. Shame won’t fix anything. It is the absolute worst motivator. Shame promises to help you change, and for a brief period it seems like it’s working. The self- imposed punishment almost feels good, in a masochistic way, like you’re paying for your sins or something. It motivates you to do some things differently to avoid the shame. But ultimately shame only discourages you more.