Loneliness

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 Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  I cared less about the fact that Bob was gone than about the disruption his departure would inevitably cause. He was just the latest casualty in a long line of failed paternal candidates. There was Steve, a soft-spoken man with a temperament to match. I used to pray that Mom would marry Steve because he was nice and had a good job. But they broke up, and she moved on to Chip, a local police officer. Chip was kind of a hillbilly himself: He loved cheap beer, country music, and catfish fishing, and we got along well until he, too, was gone. One of the worst parts, honestly, was that Bob’s departure would further complicate the tangled web of last names in our family. Lindsay was a Lewis (her dad’s last name), Mom took the last name of whichever husband she was married to, Mamaw and Papaw were Vances, and all of Mamaw’s brothers were Blantons. I shared a name with no one I really cared about (which bothered me already), and with Bob gone, explaining why my name was J.D. Hamel would require a few additional awkward moments. “Yeah, my legal father’s last name is Hamel. You haven’t met him because I don’t see him. No, I don’t know why I don’t see him.” Of all the things that I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures. To her credit, Mom had avoided abusive or neglectful partners, and I never felt mistreated by any of the men she brought into our home. But I hated the disruption. And I hated how often these boyfriends would walk out of my life just as I’d begun to like them. Lindsay, with the benefit of age and wisdom, viewed all of the men skeptically. She knew that at some point they’d be gone. With Bob’s departure, I had learned the same lesson. Mom brought these men into our lives for the right reasons. She often wondered aloud whether Chip or Bob or Steve made good “father figures.” She would say: “He takes you fishing, which is really good” or “It’s important to learn something about masculinity from someone closer to your age.” When I heard her screaming at one of them, or weeping on the floor after an especially intense argument, or when I saw her mired in despair after a breakup, I felt guilty that she was going through this for my sake. After all, I thought, Papaw was plenty good as a father figure. I promised her after each breakup that we would be okay or that we’d get over this together or (echoing Mamaw) that we didn’t need any damned men. I know Mom’s motives were not entirely selfless: She (like all of us) was motivated by the desire for love and companionship. But she was looking out for us, too. The road to hell, however, is paved with good intentions.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  My appetite is gone, but if the landlord or police were to discover three children staying here alone tonight, who knows when my next meal could be? I’ll eat now. On the bright side, at least we’ll have one more bed to sleep in tonight. Camille’s room was the nicest, and I’ll be able to sleep knowing that the kids are right next to my room. Norm and Rosie pile their dishes in the sink after dinner, and I wash them right away. Camille chases them upstairs to brush their teeth with the bottle of peroxide Cookie uses to dye her hair. Since we steal food to survive, toothpaste never makes our list. The peroxide is fizzy in my mouth and makes me gag if I swallow even a little. It dries out the corners of my mouth, making my lips crack and scab up in the corners. “But it sure does make your breath smell fresh!” Camille loves to tease me. Back in the kitchen, Camille rests the bag of her belongings on the floor and gently kisses the side of my head. “I’m going to the corner to call Doug. You gonna be okay?” I nod in her general direction. “Just go.” “Love you, Gi.” At this, I turn and watch her make her way to the front door of the house that, just hours ago, I’d been so thrilled for us to share as a family. “Love you, too,” I say, trying to force the words through the swelling cry in my throat. Then she’s gone, too. 3 And Then There Were Three Summer to Fall, 1980 I WAS ELEVEN the first time Camille left and I had to care for the kids by myself. I’m not unfamiliar with the feeling of isolation that comes with this unwilling brand of single motherhood, but every time she leaves, the worst part of loneliness returns: No matter how many times I experience it, it never gets easier. Gently, throughout my upbringing, Camille coached me for this role. It requires a subtle balance between safeguarding the kids while always giving people around us the impression that it’s actually our mother who’s caring for us. “Never act hungry, never look dirty,” she says, because if the kids are fed, clean, neat, and well behaved, we generally can slide under the radar. The goal is always to stay together and out of foster care. We admit nothing, and Rosie and Norman know what’s at stake. We have to keep quiet and not bring attention to ourselves, no matter how bad it gets. It’s our code of silence, and there’s a powerful trust among us never to violate it. The system seems content to be complicit in our charade because the social workers of Suffolk County are too busy to keep track of kids in our type of situation. This area that until recently was rural and blue-collar is rapidly increasing in population.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Their immense confidence repays me for twenty years of work which was itself congenial to me. Phlegon has recently read me verses of a Jew of Alexandria who also attributes to me superhuman powers; without irony I welcomed that description of an elderly prince who is seen going back and forth over all the roads of the earth, descending to the treasures of the mines, reawakening the generative forces of the soil, and everywhere establishing peace and prosperity; the initiate who has restored the shrines of all races, the connoisseur in magic arts, the seer who raised a youth to the heavens. I shall have been better understood by this enthusiastic Jew than by many a senator and proconsul; this adversary now won over looks upon me almost as does Arrian; I am amazed to have become for people just what I sought to be, after all, and I marvel that this success is made up of so little. Old age and death, as they approach, begin to add their majesty to this prestige; men step reverently from my path; they no longer compare me, as they once did, to serene and radiant Zeus, but to Mars Gradivus, god of long campaigns and austere discipline, or to grave Numa, inspired by the gods. Of late this pale, drawn visage, these fixed eyes and this tall body held straight by force of will, suggest to them Pluto, god of shades. Only a few intimates, a few tried and cherished friends, escape such dread contagion of respect. The young lawyer Fronto, this future magistrate who will doubtless be one of the good servants of your reign, came to discuss with me an address of mine to be made in the Senate; his voice was trembling, and I read in his face that same reverence mingled with fear. The tranquil joys of human friendship are no longer for me; men adore and venerate me far too much to love me. A happy fate not unlike that of certain gardeners has been allotted me: everything that I have tried to implant in the human imagination has taken root there. The cult of Antinous seemed like the wildest of my enterprises, the overflow of a grief which concerned me alone. But our epoch is avid for gods; it prefers the most ardent deities, and the most sorrowful, those who mingle with the wine of life a bitter honey from beyond the grave. At Delphi the youth has become the Hermes who guards the threshold, master of the dark passages leading to the shades.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Which proves we should meet more often.’ He turned away. ‘How’s it going with Phil?’ I wasn’t sure if he wanted the gratifying news that it was all over, a mere flash amid the long day of our relationship, or the mortifying assurance that it was all going fine. ‘I must say, we do rather adore each other,’ I offered, with a modesty that may have sounded like bragging. ‘He’s really cuddly.’ ‘That’s it,’ James said, with nodding recognition. ‘It’s cuddling I want really as much as everything else. It’ll sound stupid to you, Willy, but over the last few weeks I’ve just felt … so out of it. I’ve gone so long without love and I’ve become simply so accustomed to it all, as if that’s how life is and evermore shall be—death—horror—amen. It struck me that I’ve turned into the archetypal middle-class intellectual out of touch with everything, just like someone in a Forster novel, and that was eighty years ago … It’s all very well being ironic, but then it keeps coming over me that no one wants me, the summer’s burning away, and no one makes a move for me, I don’t preoccupy anyone …’ He wailed a little but was unable to cry. I went over and held him. ‘Darling heart, of course people want you. You’re so adorable.’ I kissed away the tears that weren’t there. I found him very slightly repellent. ‘They don’t. No one ever wants to fuck me.’ I chuckled almost. ‘I’ll fuck you—here and now, if that’s what you want,’ and I let my hand drift down his back and over his big schoolboy bum. He smiled shyly. ‘That would never do,’ he said. It wouldn’t of course. I held him away from me, looked at him frankly. ‘Last night,’ I reminded him. ‘Oh last night. I was driving home, full of these kinds of thoughts. I’d just been on one of those really appalling calls, to certify someone dead—suicide—at least three weeks ago—locked room—in this weather. You can imagine—no, I think you can’t imagine actually. One could hardly go into the room … I was coming along the Park, about nine o’clock—it was very heavy and still, you remember. The Creation was on the wireless, the Karajan from Salzburg last year, you know, with José van Dam, gloriously good. And suddenly it was that unspeakably sublime bit ‘Seid fruchtbar, Alle’—go forth and multiply, fill the heavens and the seas and so on? I thought I’d never heard anything more beautiful and profound—I was in hysterics—I had to pull over and put on my hazard lights and I sat there weeping and weeping until it got on to a jolly section, which it always does with Haydn, bless him.’ ‘It is a good bit.’ ‘Unutterably great. Did we use to listen to it? I felt as though I knew it but hadn’t heard it for a thousand years.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  The first thing we need to acknowledge is the close link between the marital bond and the parent-child relationship. Every parent and child knows this is true. When the marriage is working and the couple is content, the parent-child relationship is nourished and rewarded by the parents’ love and appreciation for each other and supported by their cooperation. But when the tie is severed, the break sends messages throughout the system that quickly reach the children. The first message is that parenting is diminished. The adults are now each on their own and occupied with building separate lives. How will I manage and where am I going and how can I put my life together? How does this diminished parenting show up? Ask any child of divorce. In every domain of the child’s life, parents are less available and less organized, provide fewer dinners together or even clean clothing, and do not always carry out regular household routines or help with homework or offer soothing bedtime rituals. But the big picture is more troublesome than the details. When the marriage breaks, children take on a new meaning for their parents. They may become a much heavier burden. Or they are an unfortunate residue from a dream that failed. Or they may give hope and meaning to a parent’s life. After divorce a surprising number of otherwise well-functioning adults reach out to children for help with their grown-up problems. In Karen’s case, this kind of behavior became the norm, leading her into the role of caretaker child. But in many families, the reversal of parent and child roles is more or less temporary, albeit shocking. One father told me that he revealed all his business and personal plans in Castro-like lectures to his seven-year-old son who “understands everything.” In our playroom, this child’s play consisted of running a Mack truck over a little car. Parents who are otherwise mature and responsible in their social and professional commitments will choose to be vulnerable in front of their children. Suddenly they place tremendous stock in the child’s opinion—even when the child knows absolutely nothing about the issue at hand. Thus the adult will ask for advice about a lover, how and where to live, whether or not to remarry, and whom to choose. Others share their disappointments in love with very young children. I was startled when Sammy, who was four, comforted his grieving mother whose lover had just left by saying, “He shouldn’t quit in the middle. That’s not right.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  In truth, people seek divorce for reasons beyond the wish to escape a wretched or frightening marriage. A driving force in the thousands of divorces that I have seen close-up is the wish to surmount the quiet loneliness and disappointment of a loveless marriage. People understandably reach out for another chance at happiness and companionship. Indeed, these troubled feelings merit our deep respect and understanding. But the parent’s agenda may conflict with the wishes of the children who need a stable home while growing up. Put succinctly, unlike other social ills such as poverty or community violence, where the interests of parents and children converge, divorce can benefit adults while being detrimental to the needs of children. Our moral vision and our family laws have been built on the assumption that members of a family, big and small, have the same interests. But divorce challenges this assumption straight on. We have been reluctant to face this dilemma in its full complexity. I will take up this issue of when and whether to divorce or stay together for the children’s sake in coming pages. I believe guidelines can be drawn from the life stories you are about to read. I also address whether new policies and practices by the courts and parents could better meet both the wishes of parents and the needs of children. Can we do things better is the core question of this work. Who This Book Is ForTHIS BOOK IS written for those of you who grew up in divorced families and want to know why you feel and act the way you do. Each of you believes that your suffering was unique. You’ve struggled with inner conflicts and fears whose source you don’t comprehend. You’ve lived for years with fear of loss and the worry that if you’re happy, it’s only a prelude to disaster. You fear change because deep down you believe it can only be for the worse. You’ve been worried about one or both of your parents all your life, and leaving them has been a nightmare. Like most adult children of divorce, you’ve never confessed to anyone how terrified you are of conflict because the only way you know to handle it is to explode or run away. You’ve lain awake night after night struggling with anxiety about love and commitment. You know far too much about loneliness and too little about lasting friendship. But you were too uncomfortable to mention these feelings because you had no idea that you were part of a large and growing army of millions of young adults who were raised in divorced homes and who share your bewilderment and concerns. The feelings that confuse and trouble you have deep roots in your history. By seeing how your life has been different from that of people raised in good intact families, you will begin to understand these roots for the first time. Your fears may not vanish, but they can surely be muted. That’s my first purpose.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  This may be why individuals with strong personal affiliations live longer, healthier lives. They also maintain sharper cognitive skills into old age. Indeed, one study examining the effects of playing bridge in reducing dementia symptoms concluded that the main independent variable was socialization (rather than computational skills per se). ‡ And, finally, to be engaged in the social world is not only to be engaged in the here and now, but also to feel a sense of both belonging and safety. So, ultimately freeing clients from the repercussive isolation that fear and immobility create has the potential of bringing not only freedom from debilitating symptoms, but also the potential to generate energy into the establishment of satisfying connections and relationships. * This is a method I have developed over the past forty years. † It is not clear when fighting or succumbing is the best survival strategy for rape. A dependent child experiencing molestation, however, really has little choice but to succumb. ‡ The so-called 90+ study at the University of Southern California began in 1981. It has included more than 14,000 people aged 65 and older and more than 1,000 aged 90 or older. Dr. Kawas, a senior investigator, concluded, “Interacting with people regularly, even strangers, uses easily as much brain power as doing puzzles, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what it’s all about.” J CHAPTER 6 A Map for Therapy The map may not be the territory, but it sure helps you to get around. —Me (PAL) Ancient Unspoken Voices ust as maps are useful in finding a particular part of the city, maps of the human organism * are important in navigating the landscape of trauma and informing its healing. The groundbreaking work of Stephen Porges, director of the Brain Body Center at the University of Illinois, Department of Psychiatry, has provided an eloquent, well-reasoned and broadly supported “treasure map” of the psychophysiological systems that govern the traumatic state. These same systems also mediate core feelings of goodness and belonging. Porges’s polyvagal theory of emotion 58 illuminates the pathways for recovery and integration described in Chapter 5. In addition, his model clarifies why certain common approaches to trauma psychotherapy frequently fail. Briefly, Porges’s theory states that, in humans, three basic neural energy subsystems underpin the overall state of the nervous system and correlative behaviors and emotions. The most primitive of these three (spanning about 500 million years) stems from its origin in early fish species. † The function of this primitive system is immobilization, metabolic conservation, and shutdown. Its target of action is the internal organs. Next in evolutionary development is the sympathetic nervous system. This global arousal system has evolved from the reptilian period about 300 million years ago. Its function is mobilization and enhanced action (as in fight or flight); its target in the body is the limbs. Finally, the third, and phylogenetically most recent, system (deriving from about 80 million years ago) exists only in mammals.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Parents must provide time and energy to talk, play, read, and pay attention to their young children. But where will the overwhelmed recently divorced parent find the time and the energy for this? In comparing the overall adjustment of young adults in our study with how old they were when their parents divorced, we found that the youngest looked the worst off and had the hardest time growing up. 5 Nearly all lost their mothers to the workplace and the stresses of single parenthood. Their feelings of loneliness and anger at both parents carried over into later school years and adolescence. At the twenty- five-year mark, now between twenty-eight and thirty-two years old, they are doing less well in the workplace and in relationships compared with children who were older at the time of the breakup. They have a lower level of confidence about their chances of marrying successfully and are more worried about being betrayed. Only one of the preschool girls in our study is now in a happy, stable marriage while one other is living happily with a man without plans to marry any time soon. Another, who seemed happily married, suddenly left her devoted husband to live with a former high school lover and took her own preschool daughter with her. Most of the girls in this group have not found good jobs or satisfying careers. Several operate small and rather chancy businesses out of their homes. A few are cleaning houses to support themselves. Those who had good educational support have found rewarding careers but are having trouble with men. The boys are in similar straits. Most of the men in our study who led lonely, isolated lives came out of this group. In looking over the records of these youngest children of divorce, I was mystified by the fact that good remarriages did not seem to help them overcome the trauma of divorce. Because their mothers were relatively young and found new husbands within a few years, many children soon regained the protection and financial advantages of an intact family. Several had loving stepfathers and stepmothers who cared for them tenderly and were central figures in the children’s lives from very early on. But I finally realized that, for most of these children, stepparents remained secondary figures compared to their attachment to their biological parents. Relationships with stepparents generally lack the passionate commitment that children feel about their parents. It was as if they had a slot in their minds for parents and another for stepparents and the two were kept permanently separate. They liked their “steps” a lot and appreciated their kindness and interest. Sometimes they loved them and clearly respected and admired their stepparent more than they respected their biological parent. But they did not worry about their “steps” or pity them or cry for them in the same way they did for their “real” moms and dads.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  One father told me that he revealed all his business and personal plans in Castro-like lectures to his seven-year-old son who “understands everything.” In our playroom, this child’s play consisted of running a Mack truck over a little car. Parents who are otherwise mature and responsible in their social and professional commitments will choose to be vulnerable in front of their children. Suddenly they place tremendous stock in the child’s opinion—even when the child knows absolutely nothing about the issue at hand. Thus the adult will ask for advice about a lover, how and where to live, whether or not to remarry, and whom to choose. Others share their disappointments in love with very young children. I was startled when Sammy, who was four, comforted his grieving mother whose lover had just left by saying, “He shouldn’t quit in the middle. That’s not right.” The parents’ motives are not hard to understand. Even women who choose to leave their marriages and have successful careers will feel alone and beleaguered as they face new responsibilities and have to make decisions alone, without advice from a partner. Men are also depressed and lonely at this time. They need help setting up a home for themselves and to be reassured that their children want to see them. Men and women alike feel isolated and alienated from former friends who may be reluctant to take sides—and thus stay away from both. Other friends are concerned about the cracks in their own marriages and will keep a safe distance. Family members often disapprove of the divorce and do not hesitate to say so. Feeling hurt and defeated, each parent naturally turns to the children as their most loyal confidants. Both rely heavily on their offspring for sympathy and companionship. These youngsters literally help keep the parents going. They are remarkably intuitive about adult depression and protect their parents from pressures outside and inside the home. Twenty-five years after divorce, many men and women still say to me, “I would not have made it except for this child.” Given how emotionally dependent on their children many parents become, it’s not surprising to see bitter custody or visitation fights over who has priority in the child’s life. Many parents come to believe that without that child, they have no one. Their only remaining important life relationship and loyal support lies with that child. Thus the legal battle often has its roots in adult despair and not, as many people think, in the parents’ simple desire to spend more time with the child. Men and women tell me that when the child is with the other parent they become seriously depressed and wander restlessly from room to room unable to bear their loneliness. Sometimes this behavior occurs only during the months following the breakup. But it can also endure, providing the basis for endless litigation over custody and visiting. Such battles may distract parents from their personal misery but they hardly resolve it.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Who were the women who stayed in these poor marriages? I can’t put my finger on any one trait but I can say that they all shared low expectations of themselves and of marriage. Several grew up in chaotic, violent families. Some maintained the caregiver role they’d learned in childhood; the husband was a stand-in for the mother or father or both. One woman from a seemingly stable postdivorce family who maintained close contact with both parents married a man who criticizes her constantly for her sexual frigidity and humiliated her for “doing nothing right.” Her mother told me twenty-five years earlier that these were her husband’s complaints. A few of the women had devoted stepfathers, but somehow this did not brighten their expectations of marriage. Many had been very young when their parents divorced and grew up like Paula, feeling lonely and driven to sexual frenzy. The women who married early and then divorced tell similar stories about drug and alcohol abuse, low expectations, and anxieties about leaving the marriage. At their core, the bad marriages that lasted and those that ended in divorce all looked pretty much alike. But the women who did leave finally said “enough.” The decision to divorce was fraught with anxiety because these women had few resources and little money to start over again. They did not expect to get child support. Paula will shed more light on this aspect of the story in the next chapter . In talking to the women from divorced families who married young, I thought a lot about our comparison group. Many of the women from good and “good enough” intact families told me that they were often drawn to losers in their late teens and early twenties. The guy in the motorcycle jacket was exciting and fun to play with. Men who used drugs and drank hard were wonderful party boys and excellent lovers. But they did not go on to marry such men. As they told these stories, I heard time and again how their parents’ concern played an important role in not choosing such men for life partners. “I knew my mom wanted me to be taken care of and respected,” said Donna. “I didn’t always follow her thinking and I lived with one guy who drove her up the wall. But I didn’t marry him. In the end, I listened to my mom’s advice about men.” Another woman told me, “I knew all along that my folks disapproved of my lover. But it took me five years to dump him. It was a narrow escape.” By contrast, few of the divorced parents tried to intervene in their children’s poor choice of marriage partners. I don’t know of a single father who sat his daughter down to warn her about what was ahead of her. The few mothers who tried to intervene found that their daughters ignored them because the girls didn’t credit their moms with wisdom in relationships.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I’m always thinking of you and having conversations with you in my head and imagining what you would say about things. You’re my most constant companion, even though I’m so pathetic and never get in touch with you.’ He smiled: ‘You see, just talking to you now makes me feel better. Which proves we should meet more often.’ He turned away. ‘How’s it going with Phil?’ I wasn’t sure if he wanted the gratifying news that it was all over, a mere flash amid the long day of our relationship, or the mortifying assurance that it was all going fine. ‘I must say, we do rather adore each other,’ I offered, with a modesty that may have sounded like bragging. ‘He’s really cuddly.’ ‘That’s it,’ James said, with nodding recognition. ‘It’s cuddling I want really as much as everything else. It’ll sound stupid to you, Willy, but over the last few weeks I’ve just felt … so out of it. I’ve gone so long without love and I’ve become simply so accustomed to it all, as if that’s how life is and evermore shall be—death—horror—amen. It struck me that I’ve turned into the archetypal middle-class intellectual out of touch with everything, just like someone in a Forster novel, and that was eighty years ago … It’s all very well being ironic, but then it keeps coming over me that no one wants me, the summer’s burning away, and no one makes a move for me, I don’t preoccupy anyone …’ He wailed a little but was unable to cry. I went over and held him. ‘Darling heart, of course people want you. You’re so adorable.’ I kissed away the tears that weren’t there. I found him very slightly repellent. ‘They don’t. No one ever wants to fuck me.’ I chuckled almost. ‘I’ll fuck you—here and now, if that’s what you want,’ and I let my hand drift down his back and over his big schoolboy bum. He smiled shyly. ‘That would never do,’ he said. It wouldn’t of course. I held him away from me, looked at him frankly. ‘Last night,’ I reminded him. ‘Oh last night. I was driving home, full of these kinds of thoughts. I’d just been on one of those really appalling calls, to certify someone dead—suicide—at least three weeks ago—locked room—in this weather. You can imagine—no, I think you can’t imagine actually. One could hardly go into the room … I was coming along the Park, about nine o’clock—it was very heavy and still, you remember. The Creation was on the wireless, the Karajan from Salzburg last year, you know, with José van Dam, gloriously good. And suddenly it was that unspeakably sublime bit ‘Seid fruchtbar, Alle’—go forth and multiply, fill the heavens and the seas and so on?

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  I climb on top of one of the beds and open the second-floor window, waiting for a breeze. Outside that window is a view of a big building with noisy red trucks that come out. Every afternoon there’s a loud, scary alarm that comes from a big yellow horn on top of the building. I stick my head out the window and look for someone to rescue me. When it’s clear that no one’s coming, I rest my chin in my hands and see what else is around: lots of parked cars along the tarred driveway downstairs, a forest across the street, a traffic light, and lots of cars with families driving by. I count the cars parked downstairs, and the ones driving by, and the shiny red fire frucks —a word Cherie and Camille taught me. I say it a lot because every time I do, they laugh until they fall on the floor, and that makes me laugh. Christmas Mama finally tells me I can come outside and play with my Big Wheel, as long as I stop calling her Christmas Mama. “For Chrissakes, I told you! Just call me Mom,” she says. I nod. Together my sisters carry my Big Wheel downstairs, where I can play on the sidewalk with cars whizzing by. I learn to stay quiet and just count, and this way I can stay outside all the time. When it gets really hot, I take off all my clothes and climb back on my Big Wheel, riding around in big circles to create a breeze to cool off. The glue factory workers run out and wag their fingers, stretching their necks for my mother or telling me I’m too young to play Lady Godiva. Then my sisters dash down the stairs and outside, chasing after me with my clothes in their hands. But I guess I’ve shown Mom how well I can take care of myself because one day she tells me I’m going to live in Baby Norman’s bedroom. She says she’s tired from all the work she has to do with three messy girls living in her house now, and someone needs to take care of her little prince. Mom tells me I’ll need to clean Norman’s diaper and give him baths and teach him how to go potty like I learned. If he goes in his diaper it’s my fault, so I make sure he lives on the potty. When he stands up and tries to run away with no pants on, I chase him down the hall and lure him back with the toys Mom got him at the thrift shop. Mom teaches me how to wash and wring out his cloth diapers in the tub. “You never know, I might need them again,” she says. We all have chores. Cherie and Camille have to cook and do the dishes. I have to dust and clean the bathroom. All of us take turns caring for Baby Norman.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  She craved love, attention, and above all, she wanted to be noticed and taken seriously. At the same time, she had long-standing and growing doubts about her value and desirability as a person and as a woman. She was afraid of being alone and had little or no internal sense of direction, confidence, pride in achievement, or ability. She was singularly vulnerable to the dangerous temptations of sex and drugs. She had no reason or resources to resist their lure. Sex was a sure ticket to being noticed and sought after. Screwing boys provided the illusion of being held and loved. Drugs and alcohol numbed troubled, empty feelings, inflated shaky self-esteem, and made her feel confident and powerful. As a young teenager Paula was intoxicated with feeling important and powerful for the first time, and she resentfully pushed away any doubts about her behavior. At the end of that ten-year interview, she responded to my genuine concern about what she would do if she got expelled (as she was sure to be). “I’m just confused most of the time,” she admitted. “I don’t know why. I don’t like to think about things unless they happen. If I get into trouble again, I guess the police will solve it for me. Most of my trouble is during the day when Mom’s away. Coming home to an empty house got me into drugs and alcohol. I couldn’t stand the emptiness.” I continue to be struck by the poignancy of this statement. She was indeed confused. She had absolutely no sense that she had any control over herself. She assumed that control had to come from the outside, from the police if necessary. She did connect her trouble to years of having no parent really being there for her, but her attachment to her parents wasn’t rich enough or strong enough to keep her safe—and she remained angry at both. Very early Paula crossed the boundary from childhood into pseudoadulthood. She became attached to and increasingly dependent on sex and drugs as ways to feel better, to express her anger, and to feed her loneliness. Their power over her was irresistible, and she was on a dangerous and potentially fatal path into her future. Rebellion O NE IN FOUR of the children in this study started using drugs and alcohol before their fourteenth birthdays. By the time they were seventeen years old, over half of the teenagers were drinking or taking drugs. This number compares with almost 40 percent of all teenagers nationwide. Of those who used drugs, four in five admitted that their schoolwork suffered badly as a result. A majority used these substances for more than five years and several were seriously addicted by the time they reached their twenties.

• From Untrue (2018)

  Many things were easier the second time around—being pregnant, giving birth, changing diapers, nursing her baby boy. But Annika was more comprehensively exhausted than ever. Sometimes her friends would come over to find her sitting on the living room floor with the kids, crying from sleep deprivation and frustration. Annika thought about going back to work—but childcare would be even more expensive with two, and her potential earnings could hardly justify a nanny’s or sitter’s salary. She checked out daycare options she could afford but was unimpressed with the low ratio of caregivers to babies. It wasn’t something she felt good about doing, given the option of staying home herself. Feeling trapped, she had good days and bad days. And “my sex drive just went into hibernation” is how she describes it. In a perfectly instructive example of how women are abetted and constrained by their ecological and environmental circumstances, the assertive and confident Annika was hobbled nearly beyond recognition by her adopted country’s lack of support for families with young children and new mothers in particular, and by patrilocal patterns of residence that had her far from her parents and other kin support. Annika’s girlfriends played a vital role in filling the gaps, but they had stresses and challenges of their own, with most of them as isolated and financially dependent on their husbands as Annika was on hers. By the time the babies were toddlers, Dan had been promoted and needed to travel more than ever. He was earning more now too, and while they could technically afford to stay in the city, he suggested they move to a nearby suburb with a great public school system. Annika was skeptical, given her unhappy experience in the suburbs as a culturally dislocated teenager. But Dan convinced her life would be easier with more living space and a sizeable backyard. They could drive to the nearby town with its library and children’s museum and family-friendly restaurants. They moved, in spite of Annika’s misgivings about leaving the city, where there was bustle and life on the streets that buoyed her even on the bleakest days, as well as her support system of girlfriends. In their new home, she spent most of her time isolated, alone with the kids in the house. Work was a distant memory. Dan was gone most of the time. “For a long while we only had one car, so I literally couldn’t leave the house. Then when we got a second car, I was always so tired, and the idea of strapping them in and striking out…” Her girlfriends from the city visited in the summer to lounge by the pool with their children, and Annika lived for these opportunities to catch up and feel connected and less alone—though she didn’t feel she could confide in them about her difficulties, which would “ruin the fun.” Mostly, she was on her own.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I know that Mom turned herself inside out to support us and I’ll always be grateful to her, but I remember her as absent. There were times when Mom would come home late from work and I’d need help with something for school. She’d get really uptight because she’d have an exam the next day and she needed to study. She’d tell me I’d have to do the best I could on my own for my school project because she needed to study. Then she’d lock herself in the bathroom. I remember sitting on the floor outside the bathroom door, listening to her turn the pages in her textbook.” Although Paula’s material needs for food and shelter were taken care of, she felt abandoned. Years later, Paula and other children who are very young when their parents divorce remember one thing most: a vast, unsoothable sense of loneliness. They’re angry about being left so much to themselves. They know that their parents were overwhelmed by their own changed circumstances, but that’s not grounds for forgiveness. Those who shuttled back and forth between two homes complain of going from mommy’s sitter to daddy’s sitter without spending enough time with either parent. Little children who cannot comprehend their parents’ dilemmas conclude that they’re left alone because they aren’t important, particularly valued, or interesting to any adult. They blame themselves for being naughty to explain why their mothers go away. They blame their mothers for being faithless. When they’re older, they tend to linger at their playmates’ homes, hoping that they’ll be invited to stay for supper or maybe for the evening. Some have the very secret fantasy that they’ll be invited to join the other child’s family. Children at very young ages learn to be sensitive to their parents’ moods. In some of our heartbreaking videos of families going through a divorce, a toddler can be seen climbing onto her mother’s lap and stroking her cheek to comfort her. While grateful for attention, children learn not to expect or demand it. Some resourceful children learn to entertain themselves by watching many hours of television, but others are too little or too sad and sit listlessly, waiting for the parent to return or to get her attention. Others turn to animals for companionship and reciprocity of unconditional love. Recent scientific findings show that these little preschool children are right to feel seriously deprived. 4 Young children need continuous interaction with caring, nurturing grown-ups to learn about human emotions and to develop their capacity to think. Being fed and put to bed is a tiny fraction of what they need.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Their immense confidence repays me for twenty years of work which was itself congenial to me. Phlegon has recently read me verses of a Jew of Alexandria who also attributes to me superhuman powers; without irony I welcomed that description of an elderly prince who is seen going back and forth over all the roads of the earth, descending to the treasures of the mines, reawakening the generative forces of the soil, and everywhere establishing peace and prosperity; the initiate who has restored the shrines of all races, the connoisseur in magic arts, the seer who raised a youth to the heavens. I shall have been better understood by this enthusiastic Jew than by many a senator and proconsul; this adversary now won over looks upon me almost as does Arrian; I am amazed to have become for people just what I sought to be, after all, and I marvel that this success is made up of so little. Old age and death, as they approach, begin to add their majesty to this prestige; men step reverently from my path; they no longer compare me, as they once did, to serene and radiant Zeus, but to Mars Gradivus, god of long campaigns and austere discipline, or to grave Numa, inspired by the gods. Of late this pale, drawn visage, these fixed eyes and this tall body held straight by force of will, suggest to them Pluto, god of shades. Only a few intimates, a few tried and cherished friends, escape such dread contagion of respect. The young lawyer Fronto, this future magistrate who will doubtless be one of the good servants of your reign, came to discuss with me an address of mine to be made in the Senate; his voice was trembling, and I read in his face that same reverence mingled with fear. The tranquil joys of human friendship are no longer for me; men adore and venerate me far too much to love me. A happy fate not unlike that of certain gardeners has been allotted me: everything that I have tried to implant in the human imagination has taken root there. The cult of Antinous seemed like the wildest of my enterprises, the overflow of a grief which concerned me alone. But our epoch is avid for gods; it prefers the most ardent deities, and the most sorrowful, those who mingle with the wine of life a bitter honey from beyond the grave. At Delphi the youth has become the Hermes who guards the threshold, master of the dark passages leading to the shades.

• From Untrue (2018)

  “The houses were really far apart, so it’s not like the neighbors really had much to do with one another. So basically for several years I lived in my garage, doing arts and crafts with my kids.” She paused and then summarized, “I was losing my mind.” Meanwhile, her sex life with Dan had ceased entirely. He told her the travel left him exhausted. “Once in early April I said I wanted to have sex for my birthday, which is in mid-April, because we hadn’t had sex once since Christmas!” She didn’t want to divorce, she told me, because she basically liked Dan and didn’t want her kids to grow up with divorced parents. And like Sarah, she worried about being the odd wheel at a dinner party, the divorced one at school pickup. On another level, she said, “I just knew it would be a status drop. You’re That Divorced Mom. And people might even think you’re crazy. There’s just a hostility and distrust for divorced women in the US.” She sighed. “Damaged goods.” When their youngest started kindergarten, Annika’s life was upended. Dan had a long-time girlfriend, he confessed, and he had moved them out to the suburbs in order to have more time with her. Most of the time he had been “traveling for work,” he had actually been with his girlfriend. I tried not to look shocked at this unexpected development in Annika’s story. “I guess some people could say that it was karma, or payback, or whatever, for my extracurriculars for all those years,” she continued woodenly. “But the whole time we lived in the suburbs, I wasn’t seeing anyone. I was lonely, raising my kids on my own while my husband ‘traveled.’” She took a deep breath. “Not having a job, not being out there in the world, just being in a house all day with my kids, no family or friends, I had zero leverage or independence.” Annika told me it was important I make it clear all her affairs were before kids. After, she had less time and interest and felt more committed to making her marriage work, she said.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  Some of the veterans he met were planning to stay at the Village of the Sun until they died. He could see there were a lot of reasons not to go back to the States again. A lot of the men would play cards all day long and some would drink heavily and have to be carried back into their rooms. They got pretty loud during the card games with their women hanging over their shoulders, big-busted Mexican women. It was something you would never see back home. Some of the others just stayed in their little rooms writing letters to people or reading the newspaper. It was a week before he got really restless, before he got tired of sitting around the Village. It was a Sunday and he asked Rahilio if he could go to church with him and his children. It was very quiet in the little Spanish chapel, the men sitting on one side and the women on the other. He listened to the small birds that flew above the altar during the Mass, chirping and singing. After church he told Rahilio he wanted to go into the city. * * * He was lonely and he wanted to move around. . . . He had come almost three thousand miles and now, finally, he was riding in a cab and maybe in one of the houses in the city he was going to find a woman like the women they had told him about, a woman who would love him and make his broken body come alive again, who would lie down next to the disfigurement and love it like there was not anything the matter with him at all. He cried inside for a woman, any woman, to lie close to him. In the hospital there were so many times when he had looked at the nurses and all the visitors and it would seem so crazy that the same government that provided a big check for the wounded men couldn’t provide someone warm, someone who cared for him. The cabdriver left him off at the Hilton Hotel. For a long time after that he had lunch there every day. After lunch he would wheel all over the city, taking cabs and pushing the chair as far as he could until his arms began to ache. There would always be people to help him up and down the big Mexican curbs. There were beautiful cathedrals and statues everywhere he looked, and the sky was clear most of the time. Finally one afternoon he went up to the guy who worked behind the desk at the Hilton and asked him where the biggest whorehouse in town was. The guy behind the desk wrote down the address for him and he wheeled out to the street and caught a cab. * * * The girl was very beautiful and the jukebox was playing as she pushed his chair into the small room.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Shipwreck In New York that winter, when you walk too slowly for her taste, she abandons you at a storage container craft fair in Brooklyn. You stand there with your suitcase and your puffy down coat, and she tells you as she walks away that maybe you should go back to your parents’ house in Allentown if you can’t take the city. (This is, you will recognize later, a pattern: she loves to walk away from you in places where you know no one, where you have no power, where you can’t simply get up and go somewhere. Over the course of your relationship she will walk away from you in New York a total of seven times.) You sit down on a bench and numbly try to buy a bus ticket on your phone, but your phone’s storage is full and your screen does not respond properly to your finger. When you look up she is actually gone, and you panic, because you don’t know New York, and not only do you not know New York, you hate New York, and you have too many bags and no money for a taxi and you don’t even know the difference between uptown and downtown. In every direction walk New Yorkers: so confident, so cosmopolitan. You think, they are not the kind of people who get abandoned by their girlfriends at twee craft fairs. You cry so hard that a tall woman with dreadlocks gets up from her storage container and comes over to you. She sits on the bench and puts her arm around your shoulder, and asks if she can do anything to help. You hiccup and wipe your nose with your hand, and tell her no, no, you’re just having a bad day, and she crosses back to her container to fetch something. When she returns, she hands you a tiny box of cone incense and a carved wooden incense holder. “For your new year,” she says, and you want to believe she’s right—that even though your suffering feels eternal, unrelenting, the new year is full of promise, and it is coming fast.

• From Untrue (2018)

  Annika had an intuitive sense of these truths about herself but believed they made her “different” from other women. Something must be wrong with her, she figured, that she wanted sex not only with her husband but with other men. But she was buffered by her Scandinavian upbringing and the girlfriend or two who shared her taste for sex outside a committed relationship. As Annika told me, framing it in the negative and as a failure, as most of the women I spoke to did, “I knew some other women who couldn’t stay monogamous, and that helped me feel less abnormal.” She and Dan had sex intermittently, without birth control—she always used condoms with sex partners outside marriage, she told me—and several years into their marriage, Annika was pregnant. She had a core group of girlfriends by now—from high school, college, and her work in the nonprofit world—some of whom were also expecting. Feeling sick 24/7, she drew strength from her time with them. When her daughter was born, she had a hard time nursing. Annika found herself stressed and sleep-deprived. She quit her job, as it offered no real maternal leave. They couldn’t afford a nanny, and Annika didn’t want to leave her newborn in full-time daycare. It was a struggle to live in the city on one salary. Dan started traveling more for work, telling Annika it would enhance his chances at a higher salary, bonuses, and a promotion. “When he was gone, I would make a point every day to run out with the baby in the sling to see a girlfriend at a nearby café. Otherwise, I just felt very lonely,” Annika said, looking miserable at the mere memory of this period. “And when my parents—who had moved back to Scandinavia—came to visit, they couldn’t believe our predicament,” she told me, getting up to fuss in the kitchen, then bringing us more cookies. “In my country there’s really good daycare and all kinds of support for women after they have the baby. Here, in comparison, there’s nothing.” Less than a year after her daughter was born, “just as I was getting the hang of it and doing a little better,” Annika was pregnant again.