Sadness

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 Bold Move

  Angad’s Hot Buttons SituationEmotionsIntensityActionAvoidance? Friend posted on Instagram about a trip that I missed RegretYellowPosted pictures of my vacations Yes Was talking to a friend and realized I had nothing interesting to say Annoyance Sadness YellowShared a story about a vacation to Spain last year Yes Noticed that my latest Instagram didn’t get many likes Sadness ShameYellowEdited the caption to make the post more interesting Yes Lost 10 followers on Instagram FearRedFollowed 100 random strangers to try to boost my numbers Yes Angad is stuck because he is avoiding his emotions. Every time his emotional temperature goes up, he does something to fight the discomfort. But it is not the action itself that keeps him stuck; rather, he is stuck because of the reason he is doing the specific action, which is to avoid his own emotions. If Angad were able to feel his emotions, by not reacting fast when they happen, he could develop a new relationship with them. Lessons Learned As you saw with Angad, tracking leads to insight and the ability to really catch where, when, and why reactive avoidance is taking over. Here’s how it worked out for our other cast of characters. Filomena realized that in any situation where she perceived abandonment, she would try to cling to the relationship like a drowning person to ship wreckage, which is what happens when one has an anxious attachment style. 3 Ted’s being away from her threatened her sense of security, so much so that she would unleash a stream of nonstop texts to lower her emotional temperature as fast as possible. But beyond Ted, she would also behave this way with her family and closest friends. Filomena learned that by tightly holding on to those that she loved, she was actually creating worse relationships. Lastly, Oliver found that whenever he was in a situation where the rules (whether social, personal, or professional) were not followed, he would feel great discomfort to the point of exploding. So, when one of his team members, Martha, made a mistake, he became anxious. To deal with his own anxiety, he essentially bullied her, creating momentary relief followed by immediate shame and regret, and ultimately landing him in my office. And it wasn’t just at work. He would find himself in similar situations at home. Oliver shared with me that every time his family members broke some unspoken rule, like eating dinner later than expected, he would find himself raising his voice (even while acknowledging the insignificance of eating dinner half an hour later). The altercation would typically result in dinner being restored to its regular time, but would also make Oliver feel upset and small for yelling at his wife. This sort of thing also happened with his daughters, hence the joking-but-not-really-joking duct tape gift. His family viewed him as the “hothead dad,” and everyone felt as if they needed to either walk on eggshells around him or risk another outburst.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  In the hour of his passion his soul was sorrowful to the point of death, and "his fear was greater than that of anyone. ... He experienced anguish and sorrow and disturbance of mind more than anyone else. ... He cried 'I thirst.' " Although it was uncomfortable for a Monoph- ysite like Severus to be in the position of saying that those who worshiped Christ in the days of his flesh were worshiping his corruptible body, this seemed to be re quired by the reality of the hypostatic union, as Athana- sius had already sought to show in explaining away the tears, hunger, and sorrow of the incarnate Logos. The other two properties of divinity over whose com munication to the entire God-man in the days of his flesh there was controversy, omniscience and uncreatedness, were dealt with in much the same way. But the former raised certain exegetical problems, and the latter certain metaphysical problems, that required special attention. The explicit statements of the New Testament in John 11:34 an d especially in Mark 13:32 seemed to some of the supporters of Severus clear evidence not only that THE PERSON OF THE GOD-MAN 2 74 Christ in the days of his flesh had indeed participated in weaknesses such as hunger and sorrow, but that he had also been ignorant of certain facts, notably of the hour ap.Phot.CW.230 (PG 103:1080- r 1 1 • i ^, • 1 • 84) of the last judgment. This seemed, in turn, to require even of a Monophysite position some distinction between the omniscience of God the Logos and the ignorance of the Son of man. It is an indication of the theological confusion of the time that this theory set forth by cer tain Monophysites was condemned not only by other Monophysites, but also by no less an adherent of Chalcedon than Gregory I, who took Mark 13:32 to mean that "the Son says that he does not know the day, which he himself causes to be unknown, not because he himself does not know it, but because he does not al- Gr.M.Ep. 10.21 (MGH 2:257) low it to be known." Among the opponents of Severus, on the other hand, the logic of the right-wing Monoph ysite position was carried to its ultimate conclusion when (if the report is to be believed) they maintained that from the moment of the union and incarnation the body of Christ had been not only uncorrupted, but un- Tim.cv Haer. (PG 86:44) created.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  It was generally agreed on all sides that the "body of glory" which he had after the resurrection transcended not only the limitations of time and space, but also the necessities of ordinary physical existence, and that therefore his eating then was not to satisfy his hunger but to reveal himself to the disciples. But Julian of Halicarnassus and other Monophysites arose to teach that "his body was free of corruption from the moment of union" rather than only from the resurrection. "Even though Christ wept over Lazarus," said one, "it was His incorruptible and divine tear that raised him from the dead." Therefore Christ subjected himself to these weaknesses not because of "the necessity of nature" but for the sake of the "economy" of redemption. Already in the days of his flesh The Continuing Debate 273 Paul.Ant.£/>.jy». (CSCO i03:228-29[i7:327}) See pp. 75-76, 89-90 above P3iuLAnt.Ep.syn. (CSCO i03:228-29[i7:327]) Sev.Ant.Ep.Thds. (CSCO i03:i3-i4[i7:22-23]) Philox.How.11.432 (SC 44:382) John 19:28 Philox.iW.i (CSCO 10:140- 41 [9 .-186-89}) Ath.Ar.$.54-55 (PG 26:436- 40) he was free from the "corruption" that infected all flesh; for as the Son of man, he was homoousios with Adam before the fall, not with man in his present fallen state. Inevitably, this doctrine seemed to suggest analogies to the Gnostic docetism of an earlier century, which had taught that the humanity of Christ, especially his body, was apparent rather than real. The principal refutation of it came from other opponents of Chalcedon, notably from Severus. "We do not have the right," he said, "be cause of the brilliance of the divine miracles and of the things that transcend the law of nature, to deny that his sufferings of redemption and his death occurred in ac cordance with the laws of human nature. He is the Logos incarnate without being changed. He performed the miracles as is appropriate for God, and he voluntarily per mitted the laws of the flesh to operate in his parts while he bore his sufferings in a human way." The hunger of Christ after his fast of forty days in the wilderness was "for us" and one that he "voluntarily accepted when he gave place to temptation by the Slanderer," so that he might "be victorious when he fights on the side of God, who gives food to all flesh, and might become weak and able to conquer on our behalf." Men could restrain their appetites, for he proved that they did not live by bread alone.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  Whatever the reasons, Christian theologians writing against Judaism seemed to take their opponents less and less seriously as time went on; and what their apologetic works may have lacked in vigor or fairness, they tended to make up in self-confidence. They no longer looked upon the Jewish community as a continuing participant in the holy history that had produced the church. They no longer gave serious consideration to the Jewish inter pretation of the Old Testament or to the Jewish back ground of the New. Therefore the urgency and the poi gnancy about the mystery of Israel that are so vivid in the New Testament have appeared only occasionally in Chris tian thought, as in some passages in Augustine; but these are outweighed, even in Augustine, by the many others that speak of Judaism and paganism almost as though they were equally alien to "the people of God"—the church of Gentile Christians. But the "de-Judaization of Christianity" was not ex pressed only by the place accorded to Judaism by Christian theologians. A more subtle and more pervasive effect of PRAEPARATIO EVANGELICA 22 this process is evident in the development of various Christian doctrines themselves. Among these, the doc trine of God and the doctrine of man bear marks of de-Judaization. In Judaism it was possible simultaneously i Sam. 15:ii to ascribe change of purpose to God and to declare that 1 Sam. 15:29 God did not change, without resolving the paradox; for the immutability of God was seen as the trustworthiness of his covenanted relation to his people in the concrete history of his judgment and mercy, rather than as a pri marily ontological category. But in the development of the Christian doctrine of God, immutability assumed the status of an axiomatic presupposition for the discussion of other doctrines. Hence the de-Judaization of Christian thought contributed, for example, to the form taken by the christological controversy, in which both sides defined the absoluteness of God in accordance with the principle of immutability even though they drew opposite christo- See pp. 229-32 below logical conclusions from it. Similarly, the course taken by the development of the Augustinian tradition has been affected by the loss of con tact with Jewish thought, whose refusal to polarize the free sovereignty of God and the free will of man has fre quently been labeled Pelagian. But the label is not ap propriate, for Judaism has. a Pelagian doctrine of nature but an Augustinian doctrine of grace. Augustine accused the Pelagians of ''putting the New Testament on the same level with the Old" by their view that it was possible for Aug.Gest.Pelag.i.i 5 (CSEL J r . .

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Basilius und die class. Studien. Leipz., 1857. Eug. Fialon. Étude historique et literaire sur S. Basile, suivie de l’hexaemeron. Paris, 1861. G. B. Sievers: Leben des Libanios. Berl., 1868 (p294 sqq.). Böhringer: Die drei Kappadozier oder die trinitarischen Epigonen (Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Naz.), in Kirchengesch. in Biograph., new ed. Bd. vii. and viii. 1875. Weiss: Die drei grossen Kappadozier als Exegeten. Braunsberg, 1872. R. Travers Smith: St. Basil the Great. London, 1879. (Soc. for Promoting Christian Knowledge), 232 pages. Scholl: Des heil. Basil Lehre von der Gnade. Freib., 1881. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 ii. 116–121. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, i. 282–297. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," 1889. vol. ii. 1–55. Page 904 line 7. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nyssa: Böhringer: Kirchengesch. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. G Herrmann: Greg. Nyss. Sententiae de salute adipiscenda. Halle, 1875. . T. Bergades: De universo et de anima hominis doctrina Gregor. Nyss. Leipz., 1876. W. Möller, in Herzog,2 v. 396–404. E. Venables, in Smith and Wace, ii. 761–768. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, 723–725. On his doctrine of the Trinity and the Person of Christ, see especially Baur and Dorner. On his doctrine of the apokatastasis and relation to Origen, see Möller, G. Herrmann, and Bergades. l.c. Farrar: "Lives of the Fathers," (1889), ii. 56–83. Page 909, line 4. Add to Lit. on Gregory of Nazianzus: A. Grenier: La vie et les poésies de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1858. Böhringer: K. G. in Biogr., new ed., vol. viii. 1876. Abbé A. Benoît: Vie de saint Grégoire de Nazianze. Paris, 1877. J. R. Newman: Church of the Fathers, pp. 116–145, 551. Dabas: La femme au quatrième siècle dans les poésies de Grég. de Naz. Bordeaux, 1868. H. W. Watkins, in Smith and Wace, ii. 741–761. W. Gass, in Herzog,2 v. 392–396. A. Paumier, in Lichtenberger, v., 716–722. On his christology, see Neander, Baur and especially Dorner. His views on future punishment have been discussed by Farrar, and Pusey (see vol. ii. 612). Farrar:: "Lives of the Fathers," i. 491–582. Page 920, line 22. Add: In one of his plaintive songs from his religious retreat, after lamenting the factions of the church, the loss of youth, health, strength, parents, and friends, and his gloomy and homeless condition, Gregory thus gives touching expression to his faith in Christ as the last and only comforter: "Thy will be done, O Lord! That day shall spring, When at thy word, this clay shall reappear. No death I dread, but that which sin will bring; No fire or flood without thy wrath I fear; For Thou, O Christ, my King, art fatherland to me. My wealth, and might, and rest; my all I find in Thee." 1 1 Pro;" eJauton, in Daniel’s Thesaurus Hymnol., iii., 11: Criste; a[nax, su; dev moi pavtrh, sqevno", o[lbo", a{panta, Soi; d j a[r j ajnayuvxaimi bivon kai; khvde j ajmeivya". Page 924. After line 2, add to Lit. on Cyril of Jerusalem: J. H.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  Let’s go.” I felt like leaving, but it seemed stupid to hide in the bathroom, and Sara was standing in the doorway, one hand cocked on her hip and the other fiddling with her car keys as if to say, Let’s go . “I could wear a tuxedo and your parents would still hate me!” he shouted. “That’s not my fault! You antagonize them!” She held up the car keys in front of him. “Look, we’re going now or we’re not going.” “Fuck it. I’m not going anywhere with you,” the Colonel said. “Fine. Have a great night.” Sara slammed the door so hard that a sizable biography of Leo Tolstoy (last words: “The truth is…I care a great deal…what they…”) fell off my bookshelf and landed with a thud on our checkered floor like an echo of the slamming door. “AHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!” he screamed. “So that’s Sara,” I said. “Yes.” “She seems nice.” The Colonel laughed, knelt down next to the minifridge, and pulled out a gallon of milk. He opened it, took a swig, winced, half coughed, and sat down on the couch with the milk between his legs. “Is it sour or something?” “Oh, I should have mentioned that earlier. This isn’t milk. It’s five parts milk and one part vodka. I call it ambrosia. Drink of the gods. You can barely smell the vodka in the milk, so the Eagle can’t catch me unless he actually takes a sip. The downside is that it tastes like sour milk and rubbing alcohol, but it’s Friday night, Pudge, and my girlfriend is a bitch. Want some?” “I think I’ll pass.” Aside from a few sips of champagne on New Year’s under the watchful eye of my parents, I’d never really drunk any alcohol, and “ambrosia” didn’t seem like the drink with which to start. Outside, I heard the pay phone ring. Given the fact that 190 boarders shared five pay phones, I was amazed at how infrequently it rang. We weren’t supposed to have cell phones, but I’d noticed that some of the Weekday Warriors carried them surreptitiously. And most non-Warriors called their parents, as I did, on a regular basis, so parents only called when their kids forgot. “Are you going to get that?” the Colonel asked me. I didn’t feel like being bossed around by him, but I also didn’t feel like fighting. Through a buggy twilight, I walked to the pay phone, which was drilled into the wall between Rooms 44 and 45. On both sides of the phone, dozens of phone numbers and esoteric notes were written in pen and marker (205.555.1584; Tommy to airport 4:20; 773.573.6521; JG—Kuffs? ). Calling the pay phone required a great deal of patience. I picked up on about the ninth ring. “Can you get Chip for me?” Sara asked. It sounded like she was on a cell phone. “Yeah, hold on.” I turned, and he was already behind me, as if he knew it would be her.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  You’re still my little girl,” Alice said, arranging my ringlets into the perfect Shirley Temple spiral curls that she loved. I had never before seen Alice flustered or with tears in her eyes. My father showed up shortly, giving me a brief hug and Alice a breezy hello before he hefted the suitcases Alice had lined up by the door. We watched him as he made a few trips to place the luggage in the car before he came back to retrieve me. Alice bent down to give me a kiss on my cheek, leaving a residue of her perfume on my clothes. My father opened the door, and Alice followed us part of the way toward the car, her heels clicking on the cement. “You take care of my daughter, Jim,” Alice called out. My father’s hand tightened on mine, his jaw hardening. “Goodbye, Alice,” he said. “Get in the car, Celena.” Once I was buckled in, we pulled away. Alice hadn’t moved. Her brownish blond hair was pulled into a ponytail that accentuated the slimness of her face and the sad fatigue that had settled in her features. At first I liked the idea of living at my Uncle Joe’s. He had two children, my cousins James and Tammy, with whom I’d played during prior visits. We’d raced each other up and down the street with my father snapping pictures and sometimes arranging us in poses for the camera. When he could afford it, he took all three of us to an amusement park or movie. My cousins’ mother, Aunt Terry, was one of the few white people in the neighborhood. She always seemed delighted to see me, making a big deal about how pretty and smart she thought I was. All this changed when I came to stay with them. I was squeezed into an already cramped bedroom with my cousins, a single mattress set on the floor at the foot of their twin beds for me to sleep on. Almost immediately Terry expressed her resentment of my living in her home. The house was a small, boxy structure caged by iron bars that fitted the windows and front screen door. The interior embodied the decline of Aunt Terry’s mental state. The sofa and easy chair were worn and sagging. The carpet was frayed. The stale odor from the cigarettes Aunt Terry and Uncle Joe chain-smoked never seemed to clear completely from the grayish air. As a small child I had a habit of walking on my toes without realizing it, an idiosyncrasy my aunt particularly hated almost as much as she generally disliked me. In the early evenings before my Uncle Joe came home, she made me walk the length of the living room heel-to-toe with a clothespin fastened over my nose.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I handed him the receiver and walked back to the room. A minute later, three words made their way to our room through the thick, still air of Alabama at almost-night. “Screw you too!” the Colonel shouted. Back in the room, he sat down with his ambrosia and told me, “She says I ratted out Paul and Marya. That’s what the Warriors are saying. That I ratted them out. Me . That’s why the piss in the shoes. That’s why the nearly killing you. ’Cause you live with me, and they say I’m a rat.” I tried to remember who Paul and Marya were. The names were familiar, but I had heard so many names in the last week, and I couldn’t match “Paul” and “Marya” with faces. And then I remembered why: I’d never seen them. They got kicked out the year before, having committed the Trifecta. “How long have you been dating her?” I asked. “Nine months. We never got along. I mean, I didn’t even briefly like her. Like, my mom and my dad—my dad would get pissed, and then he would beat the shit out of my mom. And then my dad would be all nice, and they’d have like a honeymoon period. But with Sara, there’s never a honeymoon period. God, how could she think I was a rat? I know, I know: Why don’t we break up?” He ran a hand through his hair, clutching a fistful of it atop his head, and said, “I guess I stay with her because she stays with me. And that’s not an easy thing to do. I’m a bad boyfriend. She’s a bad girlfriend. We deserve each other.” “But—” “I can’t believe they think that,” he said as he walked to the bookshelf and pulled down the almanac. He took a long pull off his ambrosia. “Goddamn Weekday Warriors. It was probably one of them that ratted out Paul and Marya and then blamed me to cover their tracks. Anyway, it’s a good night for staying in. Staying in with Pudge and ambrosia.” “I still—” I said, wanting to say that I didn’t understand how you could kiss someone who believed you were a rat if being a rat was the worst thing in the world, but the Colonel cut me off. “Not another word about it. You know what the capital of Sierra Leone is?” “No.” “Me neither,” he said, “but I intend to find out.” And with that, he stuck his nose in the almanac, and the conversation was over. one hundred ten days before KEEPING UP WITH MY CLASSES proved easier than I’d expected. My general predisposition to spending a lot of time inside reading gave me a distinct advantage over the average Culver Creek student. By the third week of classes, plenty of kids had been sunburned to a bufriedo-like golden brown from days spent chatting outside in the shadeless dorm circle during free periods. But I was barely pink: I studied.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  An hour passed before we finally tied Mom’s paintings on the top of the car, shoved whatever would fit into the trunk, and piled the overflow on the backseat and the car floor. Dad steered the Blue Goose through the dark, driving slowly so as not to alert anyone in the trailer park that we were, as Dad liked to put it, doing the skedaddle. He was grumbling that he couldn’t understand why the hell it took so long to grab what we needed and haul our asses into the car. “Dad!” I said. “I forgot Tinkerbell!” “Tinkerbell can make it on her own,” Dad said. “She’s like my brave little girl. You are brave and ready for adventure, right?” “I guess,” I said. I hoped whoever found Tinkerbell would love her despite her melted face. For comfort, I tried to cradle Quixote, our gray and white cat who was missing an ear, but he growled and scratched at my face. “Quiet, Quixote!” I said. “Cats don’t like to travel,” Mom explained. Anyone who didn’t like to travel wasn’t invited on our adventure, Dad said. He stopped the car, grabbed Quixote by the scruff of the neck, and tossed him out the window. Quixote landed with a screeching meow and a thud, Dad accelerated up the road, and I burst into tears. “Don’t be so sentimental,” Mom said. She told me we could always get another cat, and now Quixote was going to be a wild cat, which was much more fun than being a house cat. Brian, afraid that Dad might toss Juju out the window as well, held the dog tight. To distract us kids, Mom got us singing songs like “Don’t Fence Me In” and “This Land Is Your Land,” and Dad led us in rousing renditions of “Old Man River” and his favorite, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” After a while, I forgot about Quixote and Tinkerbell and the friends I’d left behind in the trailer park. Dad started telling us about all the exciting things we were going to do and how we were going to get rich once we reached the new place where we were going to live. “Where are we going, Dad?” I asked. “Wherever we end up,” he said. • • • Later that night, Dad stopped the car out in the middle of the desert, and we slept under the stars. We had no pillows, but Dad said that was part of his plan. He was teaching us to have good posture. The Indians didn’t use pillows, either, he explained, and look how straight they stood. We did have our scratchy army-surplus blankets, so we spread them out and lay there, looking up at the field of stars. I told Lori how lucky we were to be sleeping out under the sky like Indians. “We could live like this forever,” I said. “I think we’re going to,” she said.

• From Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin (2017)

  Anaïs was criticizing Henry for living in the realm of fantasy? Usually, everything she said was in celebration of the dream, the artist’s vision, and the imagination that she recommended as a better route to the unconscious than drugs. Trying to understand what she was saying now, I offered, “I’m a romantic.” “Oh, we’re all romantics.” She squeezed Rupert’s hand. “But Henry is the neurotic kind, always obsessed with the unattainable, the kind of romanticism that strangles life and real connection to others. I romanticize what is close at hand, what I can touch and connect with.” She leaned over to kiss Rupert’s cheek as he turned his head and caught her kiss on the lips. After meeting Henry Miller, Rupert looked a lot better to me. I wondered what it would be like if instead of being in love with Neal, who didn’t really love me, I were in love with a good-looking, not too smart, but loving man like Rupert. He certainly seemed to make Anaïs happy. I remembered that after I’d read her diary pages about her steamy affair with Miller, I’d teased her, “Henry must have been great in bed!” She’d given me a connoisseur’s knowing smile. “Rupert is much better.” She had chosen Rupert as I had chosen Neal, for the sexual passion, but she’d gotten devotion as well. I wondered why she received devotion from two husbands, while I’d never received it from any man. Sitting behind Anaïs and Rupert like their kid in the rump seat, I worried aloud, “I’m afraid I do have Henry’s negative kind of romanticism. I love Neal most now that he’s gone.” “Of course.” Anaïs turned around to face me. “But when Neal was living with you, you loved him just as much, didn’t you?” “I guess so.” “So you see, you’re not like Henry. He only loves a woman when he’s chasing her and she’s unattainable.” I thought about my relationship with Neal. I always felt I was chasing him because of his other women. I was the caboose on the roller coaster ride he led, up and down: He loves me, he loves me not (he spent the night with her). He loves me, he loves me not (he hasn’t answered my letters). Was I really different from Henry with his romantic pursuit of the unattainable? As if she could read my rumination, Anaïs offered me an encouraging smile. “The important thing is to find a man who can return your love in the present and celebrate that.” “Neal doesn’t return my love in the present,” I blurted. “I think he’s left me for good.” “Oh, Tristine, I’m so sorry. I know it’s not the same thing, but Rupert and I love you.”

• From Little Birds (1979)

  She kept her secret. Robert was deceived, until one day when they took a room in a rather cheap hotel, because the best ones were filled. The walls were thin, the doors did not close well. They got into bed. As soon as they put out the light they heard the springs of the bed in the next room squeaking rhythmically, two heavy bodies pounding into each other. Then the woman began to moan. Dorothy sat up in bed and sobbed for all that was lost. Obscurely she felt what had happened to be a punishment. She knew it was related to her taking Robert from Edna. She thought she could recapture at least the physical response with other men, and perhaps free herself and return to Robert.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Her father dropped them off at the police station on his way to work at his restaurant, Three Brothers Luncheonette. Baba was disappointed she wasn’t coming to work with him at the restaurant after graduation. She might have if there weren’t already four male cousins waiting to take over when Baba and her uncles retired. None of them believed a girl had any place working in a restaurant except as a waitress, a cashier or maybe a bookkeeper. Athena was smart to go into business with Mama, where she had a real future. Christina was sure Dr. O would cancel the annual holiday outing to New York. She could see the toll the crash had taken, the way Dr. O worked all day, then rushed to the makeshift morgue to help identify bodies by their dental records. That would take the steam out of anyone. Sure, Dr. O still told jokes in the office—the one about the guy with the carrot in his ear was his latest—and he still whistled his patients’ favorite tunes while he worked on their teeth, but she could see it in his eyes, a sadness that was never there before. This was the third year Christina had worked for Dr. O after school. He’d asked her to work for him full-time starting in June, when she graduated from Battin High School, and she was going to take him up on his offer. If her mother knew who sometimes came to Dr. O’s office she would faint. Faint and then forbid her ever to return. Or maybe the other way around. Forbid, then faint. Her mother lived to see her girls safely married to Greek husbands, as if then nothing bad could happen to them. She already had her eye on someone for Christina, Zak Galanos. He was a senior at Newark State, majoring in education. Next year he’d be teaching. His father worked at Singer’s and was known around town as the Sewing Machine Man because he could repair or recondition any Singer. Christina’s father thought she could do better. A businessman, maybe, or a lawyer. If her father knew she’d met Longy Zwillman, New Jersey’s most notorious gangster, at Dr. O’s office, let alone held a dental mirror in his mouth, she didn’t know what he’d do. But it wouldn’t be good. Now that Longy had a fancy society wife, two children, and lived in an ivy-covered mansion in West Orange, he was considered a wealthy businessman, not a gangster. He was active in the community, philanthropic, giving money to synagogues and other Jewish charities. No more talk of murder or other crimes. Still, everyone in her parents’ generation knew about him. We don’t discuss what happens in the office, Daisy always reminded her. Daisy Dupree had worked as Dr. O’s secretary forever, since he set up his dental practice nearly twenty years ago. She was considered family by the Osners. Christina was learning from Daisy how to be discreet. Discretion.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  Depression and exhaustion. I had to put in a lot of sleeping hours. Even now, years later, I still resist any attempts to cut short my sleep. The sleep helped relieve my depression; resting seems to have some curative element to it. At times, I was overwhelmed with terrible regret and sadness over the lost years (I suspect this increases as the length of time in a cult increases). What would I have done? What would I have been? These kinds of questions plagued me as I experienced a kind of tragic sadness. A feeling of uselessness was a major issue in that first year. Reacting to the ingrained cult-induced phobia that we would be nothing if we left the cult, I often thought to myself: "I have totally failed. I tried to dedicate my life to helping the world, and I did the opposite. I am completely useless." To counteract that feeling, many of us who had left the 0 felt we had to prove ourselves right away, and tried immediatelyto get involved in some kind of political activity. Of course, that was not sustainable at the time, and generally such attempts didn't last long. I also felt a great sense of shame. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have treated people like that? How did this happen to me? What did I do to bring this on myself? And, of course, there was rage, lots of it: hatred of the leader, overpowering rage, and lots of rage-filled poems. But also I experienced a lot of joy in that first year. The exhilaration of freedom was intense. I was lucky enough to have the support of the others who left with me, and we formed an ad hoc support group. We met regularly, told our stories, and analyzed what had happened. We also looked after each other. We cried and laughed a lot, and a kind of cathartic hysteria often arose as we shared our experiences in the 0. We engaged in a lot of sensory activities to wake ourselves up from the numbness we'd felt all those years: eating good food, drinking, reading and writing poetry, buying new clothes, listeningto music, and so on. Nature was particularly important to me. I came out of the group in spring and, psychologically, I identified with the new growth pushing through the soil. I knew that I had to recreate myself in some way, but also I recognized that I was resilient. I realized that inside me was still me, even though it would take work to nurture myself back again. Nature also gave me an important feeling of connection with the larger world that some might call a spiritual connection. In nature, I felt that what I was going through was just a small piece of ugliness, and that there was a world outside that didn't rely on dogma, cruelty, or manipulation.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Empty-nest relationshipsWhen children grow up and leave home, one or both parents often imagine that blissful romantic nights will follow. However, many couples find that by the time they have the house to themselves again, they feel they have nothing left in common with each other. Without the children’s lives to discuss, parents may find their only topic of conversation is the weather. The empty-nest syndrome is common and expected—after all, your life is changing for the first time in 18 years. In the wake of this, your relationship will inevitably shift and evolve. You can get it back on track, but you might have to get to know each other again. Think about building up the common ground—shared interests such as travel or golf. Now that children are no longer at the forefront of your minds, you have time to explore other interests, whether they be fitness, cooking, or gardening. While it is important to have separate hobbies to maintain your independence, having a mutual one will help create conversation and give you shared goals. Also have honest conversations about what you want from this next chapter of your life. Take some risks by stating that you would like more intimacy, and attempt to jump-start your sex life. These changes can herald the beginning of a new and beautiful time in your relationship—long weekends away, quiet nights, late mornings and breakfast in bed, and sex all over the house. And this really is a situation that you can create for yourselves, by yourselves. Get the romance backDon’t just long for those heady moments you experienced in the early days of your relationship—make yourselves a promise to reignite that excitement you shared together. Turn off the TV, feed each other strawberries and champagne, make love into the early hours of the morning—and don’t worry if you are late for work. Pursue adventure Your initial feelings of excitement when you first met your lover cannot be duplicated, but they can be imitated. When people engage in adventurous activities such as bungee jumping, riding roller-coasters, skiing, or even watching a scary movie, their brains emit dopamine and adrenaline, which are similar to the chemicals emitted during infatuation. By participating in these types of activities with your partner, you get to spend quality time together and benefit from the surges of excitement and attraction. Stay sexy The way we dress and groom ourselves is a large part of sexual attraction, yet many couples let their appearance fall by the wayside once they become comfortable with each other. Paying attention to your appearance reminds you, and your partner, how sexy you are. Even though you have been together a few years, making as much effort as you did on your first date can lead to similar emotional and sexual rewards.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I think of what subsequently ensued as a kind of tragedy in sponges, for though he promised light and space, no sooner had he passed out of my father’s life than the whole airy edifice came tumbling down. It all came about in the most ordinary lifelike way. One evening, after the customary men’s meeting, the old man came home with a sorrowful countenance. They had been informed that evening that the minister was taking leave of them. He had been offered a more advantageous position in the township of New Rochelle and, despite his great reluctance to desert his flock, he had decided to accept the offer. He had of course accepted it only after much meditation—as a duty, in other words. It would mean a better income, to be sure, but that was nothing compared to the grave responsibilities which he was about to assume. They had need of him in New Rochelle and he was obeying the voice of his conscience. All this the old man related with the same unctuousness that the minister had given to his words. But it was immediately apparent that the old man was hurt. He couldn’t see why New Rochelle could not find another minister. He said it wasn’t fair to tempt the minister with a bigger salary. We need him here , he said ruefully, with such sadness that I almost felt like weeping. He added that he was going to have a heart-to-heart talk with the minister, that if anybody could persuade him to remain it was he. In the days that followed he certainly did his best, no doubt much to the minister’s discomfiture. It was distressing to see the blank look on his face when he returned from these conferences. He had the expression of a man who was trying to grasp at a straw to keep from drowning. Naturally the minister remained adamant. Even when the old man broke down and wept before him he could not be moved to change his mind. That was the turning point. From that moment on the old man underwent a radical change. He seemed to grow bitter and querulous. He not only forgot to say grace at the table but he abstained from going to church. He resumed his old habit of going to the cemetery and basking on a bench. He became morose, then melancholy, and finally there grew into his face an expression of permanent sadness, a sadness encrusted with disillusionment, with despair, with futility. He never again mentioned the man’s name, nor the church, nor any of the elders with whom he had once associated. If he happened to pass them in the street he bade them the time of day without stopping to shake hands. He read the newspapers diligently, from back to front, without comment. Even the ads he read, every one, as though trying to block up a huge hole which was constantly before his eyes. I never heard him laugh again.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  In a large number of cults, children are instructed to address their parents by first names and address the cult leader as "Mother" or "Father." The parental role is thus reduced to that of a sibling to his or her own children.' Such neglectful and often harmful behaviors are found in many groups. For instance, in one psychotherapy cult, members wanting to have children had to get permission from their therapists, who were in essence their leadership. At birth, the children were separated from their parents to prevent so-called contamination by their "neurotic tendencies." Newborns and children were given to other members to raise, and parents had limited visitation rights. At seven and under, children were sent to boarding schools to further separate them from their parents 6 Growing up in the confines of a cult, where members are required to demonstrate excessive adulation of the leader, many children experience treatment from their parents, the leader, and perhaps others that raises great cause for concern. Tim Guest, whose mother was a follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, spent much of his childhood in the late 1970s and'8os in one or another of Bhagwan's communes in England, Oregon, India, and Germany. In his autobiography, My Life in Orange, Tim touchingly describes how a child might view parental cultic involvements. Here he is remembering one of Bhagwan's many lectures to his devotees, called sannyasins. Typically these lectures were pronounced from Bhagwan's unique throne-a bright red leather dental chair from which he pontificated more often than not under the influence of nitrous oxide inhalations drawn from a canister attached to the chair. "To enquire into love," [Bhagwan] says, "is the greatest exploration, the greatest enquiry. Everything else falls short, even atomic energy. You can be a scientist of the caliber of Albert Einstein, but you don't know what real enquiry is unless you love. And not only love, but love plus awareness ... or in scientific terms, love as levitation, against gravity." Amidst all the gentle veneration, this single sudden exclamation stands out. "Levitate!" he urges us. "Arise! Leave gravitation for the graves!" That was what Bhagwan's sannyasins wanted. In his communes around the world, sannyasins gathered together to abandon weight, to surrender themselves to levity. Or rather, that's what the adults were hoping for. The children of Bhagwan's communes needed other things. We needed comfort. We needed a place to stash our Legos. We needed our home. Shorter as we were, closer to the earth, we couldn't, or wouldn't, escape gravity. We felt things we weren't supposed to feel. We never seemed to make it off the ground.? Apparently the "love plus awareness" that Bhagwan preached to his followers (and that he primarily benefited from) lacked any understanding of what the children in their midst were experiencing, or needed. The single-mindedness of cult life is the spoiled milk cult parents offer their children; it nourishes not nearly enough and often leaves a bad taste.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  We loitered by the outbuildings for a while, then crossed the yard to Mr. Welch’s truck. Chuck siphoned gas out of the tank while Huff and I watched the house. I had never been here before, but I knew the Welch boys from school. There were three of them, all sad, shabbily dressed, and quiet to the point of muteness. One of the boys, Jack, was in my class. He was forlorn and stale-smelling, like an old man who has lost his pride. Because we had the same first name it amused Mr. Mitchell to match us up as sparring partners during PE. Then the other boys would circle us and shout, “Go, Jack! Get him, Jack! Kill him, Jack!” But Jack Welch had no stomach for it. He held his gloves up dubiously, as if he thought they might turn on him, and gave me a look of apology whenever Mr. Mitchell goaded him into taking a swing. It was strange to think of him in that dark house, his unhappy eyes closed in sleep, while I kept watch outside. Huff grunted as he scraped at his shoes with a stick. The air smelled of gasoline. Chuck filled the cans and we started back. The going was harder than the coming. We were headed uphill now. We took turns carrying the cans, swinging them forward and stumbling after them. Their weight drove us into the mud and threw us off balance, making us flounder and fall. By the time we got back we were caked with mud. I had torn my shirt on some barbed wire. My good arm was dead from the pull of the cans, the other arm pulsing with pain where I had brushed my finger against a post. I was dead tired and so were the others. Nobody said a thing about Bellingham. While Chuck drove Huff and Psycho home, I cleaned myself off and fell into bed. Mr. Bolger woke us late the next morning. He only put his head in the door and said, “Get up,” but something in his voice snapped me upright, wide awake. Chuck too. We looked at each other and got out of bed without a word. Mr. Bolger waited by the door. Once we were dressed he said, “Come on,” and set off toward the main house. He walked in long pushing strides, head bent forward as if under a weight, and never once turned to see if we were behind him. When I glanced over at Chuck his eyes were on his father’s back. His face was blank. We followed Mr. Bolger into the kitchen. Mrs. Bolger was sitting at the breakfast table, crying into a napkin. Her eyes were red and a blue vein stood out on her pale forehead. “Sit down,” Mr. Bolger said. I sat down across from Mrs. Bolger and looked at the tablecloth. Mr. Bolger said that Mr. Welch had just been by, for reasons we would have no trouble figuring out.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  When I poked my head out of my room, though, I found the hallway empty. The hushed voices seemed to come from the living room. I wandered over to the communal area, pausing at the entrance. Everyone who lived in the bunkhouse sat huddled on the floor or a beanbag, listening to the Wire. A few demonstrators, their eyes red-rimmed and blurry with tears, stood over the radio listening to a man speaking in a sober tone. They leaned toward the box the way people do when the news is important. A child passed me in her nightgown. “What happened?” I whispered. “Betty died,” she said, tucking her head and scurrying to join the others. The idea that someone who wasn’t in a movie could die was a startling thought to me. I had no idea who Betty was, but I didn’t say so because it seemed that I ought to know. I imagined she must be one of the children in the school. Gradually, over the course of the morning, I gained little bits of information. She had died of lung cancer. I didn’t know what lung cancer was. The mournful atmosphere peaked an hour later when a little girl emerged at the top of the dorm’s second floor, her eyes blurred with tears, the skin around her nose ringed red. A demonstrator ran up the stairs to embrace her and stroke her dark head. “Oh, Leda, I’m so sorry,” the demonstrator said. The attention only made Leda cry harder. When the demonstrator pulled away, the girl’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling and she grabbed the banister, swaying slightly. The scene was very dramatic, and I felt out of place watching in my nightgown as if I were in someone else’s home witnessing what should have been a private moment. I didn’t remember ever seeing Leda before. Like so many of the kids, she came into existence, for me, seemingly out of nowhere. I later learned that she had been close with Betty, that Betty was the founder’s wife and that Leda was his grandchild. I didn’t know what “founder” meant. Someone mentioned Chuck. Chuck. Did I know Chuck? The name seemed familiar. We were given little booklets with a picture of Betty and Chuck on the front, and I recognized them from various framed pictures displayed throughout the premises. Chuck was a big, fat man with a dark pelt of graying hair and one eye smaller than the other. He always seemed to be in mid-sentence or glowering at the camera. Like everyone else, he wore bibbed overalls. An enlarged picture of Betty and Chuck hung in my bunkhouse. She wore a white dress with a high neck and lace collar. A silk hat adorned her bald head, and her thin arm was linked through her husband’s, who, for his part, sported a white suit. Betty’s black skin contrasted sharply with Chuck’s pale tones, making them appear to be negatives of each other.

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  “My marriage is slowly falling apart—my husband came to represent the heartless laughing people [the surgical team] who hurt me. I exist in a dual state. A pervasive numbness covers me with a blanket; and yet the touch of a small child pulls me back to the world. For a moment, I am present and a part of life, not just an observer. “Interestingly, I function very well at work, and I am constantly given positive feedback. Life proceeds with its own sense of falsity. “There is a strangeness, bizarreness to this dual existence. I tire of it. Yet I cannot give up on life, and I cannot delude myself into believing that if I ignore the beast it will go away. I’ve thought many times that I had recalled all the events around the surgery, only to find a new one. “There are so many pieces of that 45 minutes of my life that remain unknown. My memories are still incomplete and fragmented, but I no longer think that I need to know everything in order to understand what happened. “When the fear subsides I realize I can handle it, but a part of me doubts that I can. The pull to the past is strong; it is the dark side of my life; and I must dwell there from time to time. The struggle may also be a way to know that I survive—a re-playing of the fight to survive—which apparently I won, but cannot own.” An early sign of recovery came when Nancy needed another, more extensive operation. She chose a Boston hospital for the surgery, asked for a preoperative meeting with the surgeons and the anesthesiologist specifically to discuss her prior experience, and requested that I be allowed to join them in the operating room. For the first time in many years I put on a surgical scrub suit and accompanied her into the OR while the anesthesia was induced. This time she woke up to a feeling of safety. Two years later I wrote Nancy asking her permission to use her account of anesthesia awareness in this chapter. In her reply she updated me on the progress of her recovery: “I wish I could say that the surgery to which you were so kind to accompany me ended my suffering. That sadly was not the case. After about six more months I made two choices that proved provident. I left my CBT therapist to work with a psychodynamic psychiatrist and I joined a Pilates class.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Until that morning I’d given these ubiquitous framed pictures no thought at all. They were merely part of the backdrop of the surroundings in which I’d been placed, blending in with the aseptic environment of the dormitories, cookie-cutter uniforms and shorn heads. In the days that followed, our time became a dedication and ongoing memorial for a woman who, I learned, had been much beloved and powerful within the community. Stapled booklets of her thoughts about good Synanon living were assembled and handed out for people to read. Her famous quotes were often repeated, as was the story of a bird that perched on her bed during her final moments, the notion being that the bird was a messenger that had come to take her away. This peculiar tale and the fact that she was often referred to as “The Magic Lady” fired my imagination. The demonstrators used Betty’s death as an opportunity for a teaching marathon about Synanon history and Betty’s importance to the community. During their impassioned speeches and home movies of past Synanon events, some of the commune’s rituals came to be explained to me. Betty had once been a prostitute and drug addict. I’d heard the term “drug addict” before, and I knew that many of the adults at Synanon as well as some of the demonstrators who took care of the children had been drug addicts or prostitutes. I hadn’t a clear idea what these things meant, only that they weren’t good. Chuck, the demonstrators preached, had saved everyone in Synanon from the wretchedness of their previous lives. “If it wasn’t for Chuck,” the demonstrators lectured, “the whole lot of us would be basket cases, rejects of society. Chuck developed the game to help people get their anger out and become new men and women who could have some self-worth. We all have a lot of anger eating away inside of us, even children; that’s why playing the game is important. In the game people release their festering feelings, feelings that are poisonous to their development.” Betty had come to Chuck for help in the early days of the community, when he was curing people in his living room. She’d been a raw trembling mess, strung out on drugs, spewing her rage and hatred of the world. No one had to teach her how to cuss. She knew all the bad words and wasn’t stingy with them. I imagined her as a wild-eyed woman with hair standing on end, legs spread in a fighter’s stance and hands on her hips while she yelled and screamed at others, who I envisioned cowering in their game chairs. Betty had come to Chuck wild from the streets, but his therapy had tamed her because he was a brilliant man, I learned. Community members considered Chuck and Betty’s marriage to be a beautiful symbol of racial equality.