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.

Page 46 of 212 · 20 per page

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I mean, even if I’m able to forgive him, even if I can someday move past the anger and hurt I feel, to actually be with him physically again?” Her face falls and she answers swiftly, “No, I don’t think I could do that either.” We are quiet for a moment – a rarity for both of us – and then she says, “You’re going to find someone special who is going to love and respect you, I have no doubt of it. You still have so much time ahead of you. You’re my daughter so I’m biased, but people always seem drawn to you. You’ll find love again.” I eye her skeptically, so she continues, “When your father died, I felt like I had a mark on me. You and your sister had been through so much and I had to get you through the trauma of his death and also make a living, so there was no time to think about dating.” “And yet somehow one year later you remarried!” I say. “You know faster the second time around. Plus, Dad was willing to adopt you and Jennifer and raise you as his own kids. Not many men would do that. I had to look out for all of us,” she says. “My kids don’t need another father, they need back the one they had. And I don’t want to move from one long marriage to another. I understand why it was important to you, but I need to learn how to stand on my own two feet. I’m sure someday I’ll move on, but it’s not going to be anytime soon. It could be years before Hudson and Daisy speak to Michael again. How can I move on when they have to continue to carry the pain of his betrayal with them? I can’t be OK if they’re not, so I’m stuck in this miserable holding pattern.” “You know what, Laura? You’re 47 and I’m still trying to figure out how to be happy when you’re not. Mothers always want their children to be happy, but we have little control over it. I so badly wanted you to have what I didn’t have – a lifelong marriage, a stable family – but I don’t have the power to give you that. You can’t control what your kids feel and what they’ll have to face as they move through their lives, so maybe focus less on happiness and more on resilience. Having determination and a positive attitude are things you can teach them. Happiness they will find or not find on their own, it can’t be up to you,” my mother says. I look closely at her: 76 years old, abandoned by her father as a child, widowed with two young kids at 35 but going on to earn a doctorate in computer science, becoming an award-winning pioneer in her field, raising three children and becoming a proud Jewish grandmother.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Tina and I huddle under an umbrella as we turn in the opposite direction from Michael and Georgia, and she puts her arm around me. “Oh boy,” she says with a sigh. “I’m sorry. It’s heartbreaking to see Georgia like that.” I nod my head, tears too close to the surface for me to get words out. She asks if I want to get a drink before we part, but I remind her that I have a date picking me up in twenty minutes and I gesture helplessly to myself, wondering aloud how I can pull myself together that quickly. “Oh, right! Yay, a date! That’ll be fun!” she says enthusiastically. I look at her askance so she keeps up her sales pitch, “Go home and get in the tub.” “I don’t like baths,” I say. “Really? In that huge tub of yours? Go. Light a candle. Throw in some of those bath salts I bought you in Paris that I know you’ve been letting Georgia use. Please? Just try? Remember you’re the one who always says, Saturday night, legs up?” she says. “OK, fine, you’re hard to refuse. Saturday night, legs up,” I say, hugging her goodbye. By the time Alan rings my bell exactly one minute before he is due, I am bathed, rose-scented and dressed in a black silk jumpsuit, which he will later tell me he found profoundly unflattering. We greet each other with a quick hug and kiss on the cheek and he looks much as I remember him – tall, slender, kind green eyes, gleaming bald head. He is interested in the renovations we did in the apartment, so I give him a tour and then he says we should get going. There are no good shoe options to be worn in a downpour like this and practical as I am, I’m not wearing rain boots on a date, so I put on a pair of impractical suede open-toed wedge heels and we set off. He has brought an umbrella large enough for the two of us and though I’m hoping we can jump in a taxi, we start walking instead. We walk quickly, heads down, as I delicately jump over puddles at the curbs. “You can come closer, I don’t bite,” he says, holding his arm out for me to grab onto so that I don’t continue to stray from the umbrella’s cover. At the restaurant, he encourages me to order a glass of wine even though he doesn’t drink. I drink it more quickly than I mean to and he orders me another one. I confess that it’s been a long day, that switching modes from mom to single woman often feels like a herculean effort, but that I know if I give myself an out I will forevermore be on the sofa on Saturday nights, eating ice cream out of a tub and watching Netflix series about other people living their lives.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  We are already down one loud and buoyant family member, and her departure will take us from what was just recently five inhabitants to three. The night before she is to leave, Hudson surprises me by packing Daisy’s astounding volume of belongings into the car trunk while I’m in the pool with Georgia. This help was a peace offering, and I stand dripping in my bathing suit while he proudly shows me that he got every last pillow and bin of food shoved in there. I have not had time to see #3 or #4, but both men still text me most days to say hi – a pleasant surprise given how sure I was that #3 had decided I came with too much baggage. After a period of lying low, we seem to have found our way back to the easy repartee we had established so quickly early on, and of course I am determined to stay in touch with #4, hoping for a repeat opportunity of mind-blowing sex. All that I want to share with Michael right now I share with them instead, expressing concern with how all of her belongings will be transported to her room and how I am terrible at goodbyes even when it’s just a normal “See you later!” I recall the first time Michael and I drove Daisy to sleepaway camp when she was just eight years old. I started crying as we drove up the dirt road to the camp and he sternly reprimanded me, “Get it together, Laura. You can cry all you want after we drop her but for now it’s your job to send her off, not fall apart.” I knew that he was right, and it wasn’t until I gave her a hug and quickly walked away with my head down that I realized Michael was not walking next to me. Glancing behind me, I saw him on his knees in the grass, eye level with Daisy, saying “OK, just one more hug” many times more than once. I walked back and gently took hold of his elbow, saying, “It’s time to leave now, Michael.” I had felt like a confident parent then, doing my part to gracefully separate from my oldest child; I was both moved and annoyed by his inability to do the same. Here I am eleven years later, ready to repeat the scene and launch this child into the world, but now I need to be brave without any support as I am very much alone. Texting #3 and #4 about this monumental event is wholly inadequate – they don’t know her, they hardly even know me. #3 has told me sweetly that he could show up in the parking lot with a school hat on and pretend he’s part of a move-in committee, and #4 has said that he’s going to wrap me in a long hug and keep me there a while the next time he sees me.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It takes everything I’ve got to pull myself together for a full day of being upbeat, and now I won’t have privacy at night to retreat. Plus, she’s chattier than usual, which means she has something important to say and is unloading herself of all minutiae until she has no choice but to spit it out. Over an early dinner of Greek salads at a diner, she finally divulges that a week ago Michael had visited her and my father; it was strained and distressing, as he had for decades been a son to her but now felt like an unwelcome stranger. Over the years I had often felt that she actually preferred him to me – he was open and inclusive, always inviting her to stay for dinner or join us on family vacations while I subtly shook my head no at him, wanting time with just him and the kids. She is loyal and vehemently dedicated to her children, so I know that she’s not upset that she got stuck with me instead of with him, but still, his fall from grace has been difficult for her to wrap her head around. Ever the optimist, after a long rant about how she barely recognized him as the man she’s come to know and adore, she throws in, “I’m still hopeful you’ll be able to work it out, so we’ll see, maybe he’ll come back to himself.” “We won’t be able to fix this, Mom,” I say sadly and with a degree of certainty I haven’t felt until now. “I can’t find a way.” “Well, you don’t know how you’ll feel in a few months. Take your time, that’s what a separation is for. There’s no need to decide anything right now,” she says. “I do need to decide though and I don’t feel I have endless time to do it. Living with the uncertainty of what will become of us is killing me and causing the kids horrible anxiety. I can’t stay in this state of purgatory. I would rather face what I know deep down, that I’m done. Then I can start to figure out what’s next rather than reside in this ambivalent state in which I’m consumed with the question of should I stay or should I go and pondering if it’s just fear that’s stopping me from doing what I see as inevitable. I hate him so much right now, I don’t see how I will ever not hold this against him. If you were in my position, would you be able to move forward with him?

• From The Pisces (2018)

  But he’s here for me now. The way I see it, if he didn’t want to be with me he could still be sleeping at the Korean spa. Those floor mats are not so uncomfortable. He does have a choice. He’s not forced to live with me. He’s choosing me.” Sara said she wanted to stay in group and also stay with Stan. Dr. Jude said she didn’t recommend it, but she wasn’t going to kick her out. “You’ll see,” said Sara. “I’m really flourishing. I’m even thinking of getting into spoken word.” I wondered if Sara was totally kidding herself or if she was proof that the seemingly impossible could be done after all: the mending of an old, unhealthy relationship into a new, healthy one that didn’t destroy you. Should I have been more responsive to Jamie when he had first started texting? Why had I ignored him to chase a relationship that was only sustainable when confined to a rock? Clearly I had made some kind of wrong decision or I wouldn’t be back here, head in hands, seated next to Dr. Jude’s framed poster of Jungian archetypes. What was worse, still, was that the others all seemed to have gotten better without me. Even Diana had been totally clean, off the tennis boys for over a week, and was paying more attention to her children. “Regardless of how I feel about my husband, whether I lust after him anymore or not, my children are what I really live for. I’m doing this for them. So that I can be present. It wasn’t fair to be sitting at the kitchen table with them while they ate pizza, running off every five minutes to check my phone in the living room to see if a twenty-three-year-old had texted me. I wasn’t able to be there for them. And they could sense it.” “How do you feel?” asked Dr. Jude. “A little sad,” she said. “But so much better. I’m not as on edge as I was. My worth isn’t dictated by text messages.” Brianne, too, had found some solace in her son. “When I told my son about the OkCupid guy, he said, ‘Mom, that just sounds like a lot of drama. Do you really need that?’ And I thought, You’re right. Drama. It really is that simple. So I set some healthy boundaries. I told the guy that I would still love to see him when he got back to the States but that I wasn’t going to give him any money.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  When I looked at Claire I saw that there was no human who could do that for us. Fill the hole. That was the sad part of Sappho’s spaces. Where there had been something beautiful there before, now they were blank. Time erased all. That was the part nobody could handle. Some people tried to shove things in them: their own narratives, biographical crap. I was pretending that nothing had ever been there in the first place, so that I wouldn’t feel the hurt of its absence. I wanted to be immune to time, the pain of it. But pretending didn’t make it so. Everything dissolved. No one really wanted satiety. It was the prospect of satiety—the excitement around the notion that we could ever be satisfied—that kept us going. But if you were ever actually satisfied it wouldn’t be satisfaction. You would just get hungry for something else. The only way to maybe have satisfaction would be to accept the nothingness and not try to put anyone else in it. When I left Claire, I blocked Garrett in my phone. I also deleted the Tinder app. Then I went to Whole Foods and bought myself an expensive array of ingredients: a cod fillet, little clams, good olive oil, a bottle of white wine, black truffles, shallots, chanterelles. I finally bought Dominic the ingredients for his turkey, pea, and zucchini dish. Even though I’m not a great cook, we were going to have a little feast. First I stewed up his mess. I loved watching him eat, how absorbed in it and unselfconscious he was, gobbling quickly and getting right to the point. I loved the sounds he made with his black lips and pink tongue, all sloppy and smacking, totally engrossed in his meal. Occasionally he would stop midbowl, still chewing, and glance at me sideways for a moment as if to say, What are you looking at? I’m just eating. We all do it, you know. Then I cooked the fillet and clams in the wine and oil, browning the mushrooms and shallots to a crisp. It was delicious. I drank the rest of the wine and sat down with my Sappho. Sappho’s gaps are not intentional negative space, and I do not propose we read them as such. The words are gone and they are never coming back, I typed. We can try to fill the gaps with biographical knowledge, but this will not replicate the music. Guessing at gaps cannot simulate music. Nor can the silence of the gaps simulate the missing music either. But the silence comes closer.

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

  At the close of the twelfth century a complete change was made in the doctrine of penance. The theory of the early Church, elaborated by Tertullian and other Church fathers, was that penance is efficient to remove sins committed after baptism, and that it consisted in certain penitential exercises such as prayer and alms. The first elements added by the mediaeval system were that confession to the priest and absolution by the priest are necessary conditions of pardon. Peter the Lombard did not make the mediation of the priest a requirement, but declared that confession to God was sufficient. In his time, he says, there was no agreement on three aspects of penance: first, whether contrition for sin was not all that was necessary for its remission; second, whether confession to the priest was essential; and third, whether confession to a layman was insufficient. The opinions handed down from the Fathers, he asserts, were diverse, if not antagonistic.1716 Alexander of Hales marks a new era in the history of the doctrine. He was the first of the Schoolmen to answer clearly all these questions, and to him more than to any other single theologian does the Catholic Church owe its doctrine of penance. Thomas Aquinas confirmed what Alexander taught.1717 In distinction from baptism, which is a regeneration, Thomas Aquinas declared penance to be a restoration to health and he and Bonaventura agreed that it is the efficacious remedy for mortal sins. Thomas traced its institution back to Christ, who left word that "penance and remission of sins should be preached from Jerusalem," Luke 24:47. James had this institution in mind when he called upon Christians to confess their sins one to another.1718 Penance may be repeated, for we may again and again lose our love to God. Penance consists of four elements: contrition of heart, confession with the mouth, satisfaction by works, and the priest’s absolution. The first three are called the substance of penance and are the act of the offender. The priest’s absolution is termed the form of penance.1719 1. Contrition was defined as the sorrow of the soul for its sins, an aversion from them, and a determination not to commit them again. The Lombard and Gratian taught that such contrition, being rooted in love, is adequate for the divine pardon without confession to a priest or priestly absolution.1720

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Katherine had asked me for guidance, “Tell me what you want, to leave him or to reunite, and I will come up with every good reason for it.” Mara had sat with me at Starbucks when I told her my news, straight through an appointment I knew she was missing in order to stay with me, and reassured me that if I took Michael back, she and my other friends would too. Jacqueline heeded my request not to speak badly of Michael, but besieged him with angry texts for hurting me. Jen, Lauren and Jessica sat with me in Jessica’s living room for hours at a time, listening and asking questions and holding my hand. If I expressed anger at Michael, they nodded along but otherwise used self-restraint I could see caused their lips to press together in a tight line. Johanna and Stephen took me and the kids to our favorite dim sum restaurant. When Stephen asked if I was feeling better on the no-sugar diet I had started just a couple of weeks earlier, before my marriage came to a screeching halt, I gave him a quizzical look and repeated in a dazed tone, “Do I feel better?” and we both laughed at the absurdity of the question until we cried. Julie texted emojis from her home in Chicago, apologizing that she could not be at my side but letting me know every single day that she was thinking of me. I could feel the vibrations of the love these friends had for me and admired them for facing my grief head-on without trying to manage it. They had offered solace and hugs and tissues, but not advice, understanding that I had to figure this out on my own. Now, as I tell them my brazen story, they gracefully change course, cheering for me, expressing delight that I have momentarily emerged from my paralyzed stupor, showering me with praise for my boldness. They joke that somehow I’ve ended up ahead, that the tragedy of my fall and then excitement of my rise is a surprise and wonder, something to envy if they didn’t love me so much. Even so, I’m keenly aware that my life – my real, mundane life – goes on much as it did before, and that at the moment it’s pretty bleak. I’m still furious at Michael, tender with Georgia and equal parts terrified of the once-clear future now hazy in front of me and miserably alone. For all the chutzpah that had me soaring on Saturday night, I’ve landed back on my little square of the earth and am certain that the entire episode was a fluke, something I will likely not experience again. * By Wednesday afternoon, the momentary high of Saturday night has only served to remind me of how low I actually am now that I’m back in my routine with Georgia and feeling more than a little sorry for myself.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It was a reminder of what we used to have that we will never have again. I feel worse than before,” she calmly states, and now I see it clearly too. I’m not going to be able to pick and choose when we are a family the way we used to be, the kids need it to be one way or the other. Either it’s over and they grieve and move on, or they get it back. Flashes of normalcy merely feel like a cruel taunt. I tell her I understand and thank her for trying. A few days later, I take a train back to the city to spend New Year’s Eve with #6, while Michael stays upstate to usher in 2019 with Georgia and Hudson, and Daisy heads off to visit friends. We had started an annual New Year’s Eve celebration with Erika and her family nineteen years earlier when I was pregnant with Daisy, over the years adding five children to the mix who tumbled around in penguin-like snowsuits while we grilled shish kebab on the deck. This beloved tradition is yet another casualty of the collapse of our marriage and tugs at a worry I’ve had recently as I’ve considered the long-term effects of our split. We had a circle of friends with whom we spent time as a couple and as a family, but the perfect balance of spouses and children has been altered irrevocably. I’m not worried about dividing up friends as I know some are steadfastly loyal to me, others to Michael, and yet others are struggling with how to embrace us both, which is what I want. I have never needed my friends more than I do now and I know the same is true for Michael – I may wish he spends the rest of his life bemoaning that he missed out on my sexual heyday, but I don’t want him to cry about it alone. I do, however, miss being part of a posse as a couple and family. My friends always make me feel welcome and wanted on my own, but I’ve had to reluctantly accept that it’s not the same as it was and I can’t get it back – one more loss to swallow. A few friends have invited me to come to their New Year’s celebrations, but they will have younger kids in tow and I fear I will find it painful to be around them without Georgia in the mix. Other friends have invited me to stop by with #6, but we haven’t met each other’s friends yet and doing so feels like a level of commitment for which we are not yet ready. We are on our own, which is how we like it at this point and what we can comfortably handle, safely nestled inside our little bubble for two. * #6 leaves his office in the late afternoon so we can meet at a theater for an early movie.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘Yes—come close. Closer . . . closer, sweetheart. . . .’ 2Shaken and very greatly humbled, Mary had let Stephen go from her to Morton. She had not been deceived by Stephen’s glib words, and had now no illusions regarding Anna Gordon. Lady Anna, suspecting the truth about them, had not wished to meet her. It was all quite clear, cruelly clear if it came to that matter—but these thoughts she had mercifully hidden from Stephen. She had seen Stephen off at the station with a smile: ‘I’ll write every day. Do put on your coat, darling; you don’t want to arrive at Morton with a chill. And mind you wire when you get to Dover.’ Yet now as she sat in the empty study, she must bury her face and cry a little because she was here and Stephen in England . . . and then of course, this was their first real parting. David sat watching with luminous eyes in which were reflected her secret troubles; then he got up and planted a paw on the book, for he thought it high time to have done with this reading. He lacked the language that Raftery had known—the language of many small sounds and small movements—a clumsy and inarticulate fellow he was, but unrestrainedly loving. He nearly broke his own heart between love and the deep gratitude which he felt for Mary. At the moment he wanted to lay back his ears and howl with despair to see her unhappy. He wanted to make an enormous noise, the kind of noise wild folk make in the jungle—lions and tigers and other wild folk that David had heard about from his mother—his mother had been in Africa once a long time ago, with an old French colonel. But instead he abruptly licked Mary’s cheek—it tasted peculiar, he thought, like sea water. ‘Do you want a walk, David?’ she asked him gently. And as well as he could, David nodded his head by wagging his tail which was shaped like a sickle. Then he capered, thumping the ground with his paws; after which he barked twice in an effort to amuse her, for such things had seemed funny to her in the past, although now she appeared not to notice his capers. However, she had put on her hat and coat; so, still barking, he followed her through the courtyard. They wandered along the Quai Voltaire, Mary pausing to look at the misty river. ‘Shall I dive in and bring you a rat?’ inquired David by lunging wildly backwards and forwards. She shook her head. ‘Do stop, David; be good!’ Then she sighed again and stared at the river; so David stared too, but he stared at Mary.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘Oh, my dear—it’s so dreadfully hard to tell you. The pay was rotten, not enough to live on—I used to think that they did it on purpose, lots of the girls used to think that way too—they never gave us quite enough to live on. You see, I hadn’t a vestige of talent, I could only dress up and try to look pretty. I never got a real speaking part, I just danced, not well, but I’d got a good figure.’ She paused and tried to look up through the gloom, but Stephen’s face was hidden in shadow. ‘Well then, darling—Stephen, I want to feel your arms, hold me closer—well then, I—there was a man who wanted me—not as you want me, Stephen, to protect and care for me; God, no, not that way! And I was so poor and so tired and so frightened; why sometimes my shoes would let in the slush because they were old and I hadn’t the money to buy myself new ones—try to think of that, darling. And I’d cry when I washed my hands in the winter because they’d be bleeding from broken chilblains. Well, I couldn’t stay the course any longer, that’s all. . . .’ The little gilt clock on the desk ticked loudly. Tick, tick! Tick, tick! An astonishing voice to come from so small and fragile a body. Somewhere out in the garden a dog barked—Tony, chasing imaginary rabbits through the darkness. ‘Stephen!’ ‘Yes, my dear?’ ‘Have you understood me?’ ‘Yes—oh, yes, I’ve understood you. Go on.’

• From The Pisces (2018)

  There was no one else here but me.” Acknowledgments Thank you to Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, my agent and mermaid, for being a believer from the beginning. Thank you to my editor, Alexis Washam, for your vision, and to Molly Stern, Liz Wetzel, Rachel Rokicki, Lindsay Sagnette, Roxanne Hiatt, Lisa Erickson, Jillian Buckley, Alex Larned, Rachel Willey, and all of the other amazing people at Hogarth. Thank you to the passionate ladies at Bloomsbury UK: Alexis Kirschbaum, Philippa Cotton, Alexandra Pringle and Rachel Wilkie—you make me feel lucky. Thank you to my Hollywood mafia: Michelle Weiner and Olivia Blaustein at CAA. Thank you to Olive Uniacke and Erik Feig at Lionsgate, and to Anne Carey for keeping it (sur)real. Thank you to Libby Burton, whose initial edits were vital to this book. Thank you to my foreign publishers, especially Aylin Salzmann at Ullstein! Thank you to Amy Jones, Susanna Brisk, and Karah Preiss. Thank you to my parents for my education. Thank you to Pickle for showing me the love of a good (bad!) dog. Love and gratitude to Nicholas Poluhoff, without whom—for so many reasons—this book would never have existed. About the Author Melissa Broder is the author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections, including Last Sext . She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for poetry, and her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Iowa Review, Tin House, Guernica, Fence, The Missouri Review, and others. She writes the “So Sad Today” column at Vice, the astrology column for Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter, and the “Beauty and Death” column on Elle.com . She lives in Los Angeles. What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now. 24. I left therapy and saw that Claire had called. “Can you meet me at Pain Quotidien?” she asked. “I’m in hell. I’m dying.” “Of course,” I said. When I got there, she was crying in the corner over an almond Danish. “I really felt like me and Trent had a connection,” she said. “I really felt like with this whole polyamory bit I would have enough going on to keep everything under control. Like I wouldn’t get too attached or too crazy about any single one of them. Now that’s all gone tits up.” “Which one was Trent?” I asked. “The old one with the ponytail.” “Fuck him,” I said. “What an idiot. You can do better. You know who else was an old guy with a ponytail? This creepy guy who used to come sit in the library for twelve hours a day. He wasn’t homeless, he had really nice sneakers, but he would just watch all the undergrad girls all day. At first I felt bad for him, because he was old and would sometimes bring soup and there is nothing sadder than an older man eating soup alone.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But sport was not all that drew Stephen to Martin, for his mind, like hers, was responsive to beauty, and she taught him the country-side that she loved, from Upton to Castle Morton common—the common that lies at the foot of the hills. But far beyond Castle Morton she took him. They would ride down the winding lane to Bromsberrow, then crossing the small stream at Clincher’s Mill, jog home through the bare winter woods of Eastnor. And she taught him the hills whose plentiful bosoms had made Anna think of green-girdled mothers, mothers of sons, as she sat and watched them, great with the child who should have been her son. They climbed the venerable Worcestershire Beacon that stands guardian of all the seven Malverns, or wandered across the hills of the Wells to the old British Camp above the Wye Valley. The Valley would lie half in light, half in shadow, and beyond would be Wales and the dim Black Mountains. Then Stephen’s heart would tighten a little, as it always had done because of that beauty, so that one day she said: ‘When I was a child, this used to make me want to cry, Martin.’ And he answered: ‘Some part of us always sheds tears when we see lovely things—they make us regretful.’ But when she asked him why this should be, he shook his head slowly, unable to tell her. Sometimes they walked through Hollybush woods, then on up Raggedstone, a hill grim with legend—its shadow would bring misfortune or death to those it fell on, according to legend. Martin would pause to examine the thorn trees, ancient thorns that had weathered many a hard winter. He would touch them with gentle, pitying fingers: ‘Look, Stephen—the courage of these old fellows! They’re all twisted and crippled; it hurts me to see them, yet they go on patiently doing their bit—have you ever thought about the enormous courage of trees? I have, and it seems to me amazing. The Lord dumps them down and they’ve just got to stick it, no matter what happens—that must need some courage!’ And one day he said: ‘Don’t think me quite mad, but if we survive death then the trees will survive it; there must be some sort of a forest heaven for all the faithful—the faithful of trees. I expect they take their birds along with them; why not? “And in death they were not divided.” ’ Then he laughed, but she saw that his eyes were quite grave, so she asked him: ‘Do you believe in God, Martin?’ And he answered: ‘Yes, because of His trees. Don’t you?’ ‘I’m not sure—’ ‘Oh, my poor, blind Stephen! Look again, go on looking until you do believe.’

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  How’s Michael?” “I had a rough year too, trying to get back on my feet. Michael and I split up,” I say quietly, glancing at Georgia, who is peering into the salad bar a few feet away. My throat instantly constricts. I know that his sympathetic look will reduce me to tears so I reach out to hug him again and say I have to get going. “Oh, wow, I’m shocked. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. If you ever want to talk or need a friend, I’m a good listener.” I thank him and give him my cell number, suggesting that he reach out at some point. Then Georgia is tugging me over to the freezer aisle and Johnny is gone. Fifteen minutes later, Georgia and I are en route to her gymnastics class when I get a text from Johnny: “I’m sorry about you and Michael. You guys seemed so solid to me. You’re the last couple I would have expected this from. I know you’ll get through it, but it’s got to be hard right now.” I respond that it is indeed very difficult and within a few texts we have made a plan to have a drink the coming Sunday after I drop Georgia at sleepaway camp. * As we drive home from my parents’ house on Saturday afternoon after Georgia has said her goodbyes and instructed them on exactly what they should include in their upcoming care packages to her, she requests a send-off dinner with me and Michael that evening. I want to fulfill this simple request and I’m furious at myself that I can’t bring myself to do it, and at Michael for putting us in this position. “I’m so sorry, sweet girl. Daddy and I aren’t able to do that yet. We’re very upset with each other and need time to calm down and move on. We’re trying hard to forgive each other, we just need more time.” “Whose fault is it that you’re mad at each other?” she asks. “Both of ours,” I say. I don’t like having to accept responsibility for our current situation, but I want her to have healthy relationships with both of us and I will bend the truth to help make that happen. “I always tell you that it takes two to tango, right? It’s not one person’s fault, it’s about how two people are together.” “OK,” she murmurs so quietly that it breaks my heart. “I can’t promise that Daddy and I will stay married, but I can promise that someday we’ll do better than we’re doing now. I will always be your mom and Dad will always be your dad and we will always love you and Daisy and Hudson the most in the world.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Maybe it had brought him to me at the same time as Diana to teach me a lesson. I didn’t know if the universe actively taught lessons. But if it did, the lesson was that I could not handle what I thought I could handle. The lesson was that I didn’t need to act out with Theo to learn the lesson. I didn’t have to suffer again. The suffering of others, Claire and now Diana, could remind me of my own suffering: the suffering of the past and my potential future suffering. Maybe this is why we did things in groups. Maybe this is why people had friends: so we could see ourselves and our own insanity in them. Instead I went over to Abbot Kinney with Dominic. A few people stopped and commented on him, how beautiful he was, how regal. I felt proud of him, not eclipsed by him, as though being with him somehow made me better. He made me feel purebred. What was money anyway? What was polish? Why was I so susceptible to flights of fancy, my perception of other people’s views of me? Look at Diana. I thought she had it together and she was a mess. She actually liked me. Maybe I didn’t need someone else to define me, but oh, I still wanted it. How vacuous was I? How empty was I that I needed a border drawn by someone else to tell me who I was? It didn’t even matter whether the person was real, a lover, a new friend, or even a dog. The person could even be imaginary, like the fancy people I saw on the street, who were not themselves imaginary, but became whatever it was I projected onto them. Seeing myself through the eyes of a projection, however uncomfortable the judgment, made me feel safe in a strange way. It was like a box in which to live: a boundary against the greater nothingness, to think one knew something about what others thought of you. It was there I could begin and end. And perhaps it was a prison, to have to begin and end, but it was also a relief. This is why the Greeks needed myth: for that boundary, to know where they stood amidst the infinite. No one can simply coexist with the ocean, storms, the cypress trees. They had to codify the elements with language and greater meaning, and create gods out of them—gods who looked suspiciously like themselves—so that even if they were powerless over nature, there were better versions of them in control. Or perhaps it was not for the sake of control over the terror of nature at all that they created their gods. Perhaps it was because the world, with all its beauty, was not enough.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I ran from the room clutching my throat and out onto the sidewalk. I crouched down in a squat with my head between my knees. Just to be alone again, away from all of that humanity that echoed my own, made me feel better. The sadness and nausea began to subside. Then I heard the door of the building open and footsteps behind me. It was Chickenhorse, coming to check on me. I wondered how she got elected. “Hey, just making sure you are okay.” “I’m not,” I said. “Do you want to come back inside?” “No, I need air.” “Do you think I should sit with you?” “I should probably just be left alone.” “We aren’t going to hurt you, Lucy.” I looked at her face. For a moment she didn’t look chickeny or horsey. Her eyes were big and brown and with her mouth closed she had nice, plump, red lips. Was it possible that she was actually pretty? “Listen,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on with you. What it is exactly that you’re doing. I mean, aside from the Jamie thing. But, whatever it is—you don’t have to do it.” I laughed out loud, a crazy-sounding laugh. I was crouched on a sidewalk in the middle of the day. Whatever I was doing, of course I had to do it. “You don’t really know me,” I said. “Maybe not,” she said. “But I relate.” I didn’t want her to relate. I didn’t want to be like her. But I knew she was being honest. “So what’s the solution? Never date again?” I asked. She looked at me. “Honestly, I don’t know. Things were so bad for me by the end—the end of my last run. It could have killed me, easily. If I ever end up in that emotional space again? In a way, I think I’d be lucky to be dead. It would be worse to roam the planet, a tormented soul, for the rest of my life.” Maybe this was why I was in group, to remind people like her of the hell that awaited them just on the other side. I was here to be a cautionary tale. “How did you get through your withdrawal without dying?” I asked. “I just kept going. One minute at a time. And gradually I saw that the feelings didn’t destroy me.” “But you were forced to give him up, right? You didn’t choose to do it. I mean, he got a restraining order?” “What does a restraining order mean to people like us? In the face of our kind of obsession? But I guess, technically, yes, I was forbidden from being with him. I didn’t make the choice.”

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  MEMORIALS. Among those many early Christian tombs are two legendary burial sites, that of Paul himself, now under the church called St. Paul Outside the Walls on the Via Ostiensis, the road that left the city and headed south to Ostia between Trastevere and the Via Appia, and that of Peter, today in the crypt of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Both are mentioned by the fourth-century Christian historian Eusebius quoting one Gaius from around 200 C.E., who wrote that Christians honored memorials to Paul and Peter at those locations (2.25.7). Though archaeologists have indeed found burials at those sites, we are less concerned here with arguing for or against their historicity than with their aid in locating the earliest Christian communities in Rome and the socioeconomic and theological information they provide about those earliest Christians. First and in some detail, Peter’s crypt. Over the years much archaeological energy has been spent under the Vatican, and the excavations tell a fascinating story—even if Peter was not actually buried there. Excavations reveal that by the middle of the second century Christians were venerating a simple grave in the Vatican Hill’s aboveground cemetery, which excavators labeled “P.” It was covered with a stone slab running west-southwest to east-northeast in an area used also by pagans. When two non-Christian mausoleums restructured the space between them by building stairs down the slope and a wall for some privacy or enclosure, that wall, painted red, cut obliquely over what was presumably Peter’s grave. Christians were apparently unable to stop those pagan renovations by purchasing the space around their own revered tomb. Sometime after the red wall’s construction, they did fashion an aedicula onto it with two niches and simple white columns supporting a beam, but that was aligned awkwardly over the stone slab. By all standards it was a relatively meager monument, though certainly more prestigious than many of the graves that crowded around Peter’s tomb, many of which were simply shallow holes in the ground covered by brick tiles. As Lampe says in his book From Paul to Valentinus, “If we compare the sociology of the grave area ‘P’ with the sociology of the city region attached to the Vatican, Trastevere, both parts fit together seamlessly” (115). They both belonged to the humiliores, the common people of Rome. Second and very briefly, Paul’s grave. In 1823 the Church of St. Paul Outside the Walls burned down and a new one was subsequently rebuilt; unfortunately little excavation took place then, and now future excavation is all but impossible. What was discovered, however, was ironic but in a way appropriate. The area under and around that first church was a pagan burial place from first through third centuries C.E. We wonder if that’s not how Paul would have wanted it. Paul, apostle of God to the Gentiles, was buried among the pagans to whom he had dedicated his life.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  3 Stephen left Cornwall without a regret; everything about it had seemed to her depressing. Its rather grim beauty which at any other time would have deeply appealed to her virile nature, had but added to the gloom of those interminable weeks spent apart from Angela Crossby. For her perturbation had been growing apace, she was constantly oppressed by doubts and vague fears; bewildered, uncertain of her own power to hold; uncertain too, of Angela’s will to be held by this dangerous yet bloodless loving. Her defrauded body had been troubling her sorely, so that she had tramped over beach and headland, cursing the strength of the youth that was in her, trying to trample down her hot youth and only succeeding in augmenting its vigour. But now that the ordeal had come to an end at last, she began to feel less despondent. In a week’s time Angela would get back from Scotland; then at least the hunger of the eyes could be appeased—a terrible thing that hunger of the eyes for the sight of the well-loved being. And then Angela’s birthday was drawing near, which would surely provide an excuse for a present. She had sternly forbidden the giving of presents, even humble keepsakes, on account of Ralph—still, a birthday was different, and in any case Stephen was quite determined to risk it. For the impulse to give that is common to all lovers, was in her attaining enormous proportions, so that she visualized Angela decked in diadems worthy of Cleopatra; so that she sat and stared at her bank book with eyes that grew angry when they lit on her balance. What was the good of plenty of money if it could not be spent on the person one loved? Well, this time it should be so spent, and spent largely; no limit was going to be set to this present! An unworthy and tiresome thing money, at best, but it can at least ease the heart of the lover. When he lightens his purse he lightens his heart, though this can hardly be accounted a virtue, for such giving is perhaps the most insidious form of self-indulgence that is known to mankind. 4 Stephen had said quite casually to Anna: ‘Suppose we stay three or four days in London on our way back to Morton? You could do some shopping.’ Anna had agreed, thinking of her house linen which wanted renewing; but Stephen had been thinking of the jewellers’ shops in Bond Street.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Should I have been more responsive to Jamie when he had first started texting? Why had I ignored him to chase a relationship that was only sustainable when confined to a rock? Clearly I had made some kind of wrong decision or I wouldn’t be back here, head in hands, seated next to Dr. Jude’s framed poster of Jungian archetypes. What was worse, still, was that the others all seemed to have gotten better without me. Even Diana had been totally clean, off the tennis boys for over a week, and was paying more attention to her children. “Regardless of how I feel about my husband, whether I lust after him anymore or not, my children are what I really live for. I’m doing this for them. So that I can be present. It wasn’t fair to be sitting at the kitchen table with them while they ate pizza, running off every five minutes to check my phone in the living room to see if a twenty-three-year-old had texted me. I wasn’t able to be there for them. And they could sense it.” “How do you feel?” asked Dr. Jude. “A little sad,” she said. “But so much better. I’m not as on edge as I was. My worth isn’t dictated by text messages.” Brianne, too, had found some solace in her son. “When I told my son about the OkCupid guy, he said, ‘Mom, that just sounds like a lot of drama. Do you really need that?’ And I thought, You’re right. Drama. It really is that simple. So I set some healthy boundaries. I told the guy that I would still love to see him when he got back to the States but that I wasn’t going to give him any money. I said that I wished him the best of luck and I believe in him: that he would be able to make it work to find his way back here.” “Awesome,” said Sara, biting into a Bosc pear. “But the strangest thing was, the very next day, my son and his girlfriend broke up. He said that he was sad, but he knew it was for the best, because now he could see there was drama in that relationship too. Then he said, and I’ll never forget this, ‘Mom, I’m so glad that we can have a nice relationship. It means so much to me that I can tell you these things.’ ” What a pussy, I thought. But was he a pussy? He probably knew more than all of us. Maybe children weren’t the worst thing after all. They couldn’t be any worse than anything else. I had always judged these women who derived such satisfaction from their offspring. I thought they were weak and nauseating, like they had given up on their own lives. But I liked Diana.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  They knew that their mothers could come in later to finish the job, without them even having to ask. So they took it all lightly. They did this with their lovers too. I looked at Brianne’s cheeks, straining desperately to be young, and wondered what her face had looked like as a little girl. She found it unfair, terrifying, that time was actually passing. Time wasn’t supposed to pass. Or it was supposed to pass for everyone else but her. I understood this. I was scared too. I wanted to stroke her cheek and tell her that she didn’t have to put anything else in it. That she was still young in some essential way. A wave of pain rose inside me that I had never known could be so palpable. I felt that it was going to kill me, and tried to shove it down. The pushing back against it left me with a choking feeling. Who even knew what was killing me more: the pain itself or the fight against the pain? I was seeing, hearing, and feeling too much. I felt that if I did not leave the room in that moment that I would suffocate on something—the feeling or the resistance to the feeling—and I would die. I ran from the room clutching my throat and out onto the sidewalk. I crouched down in a squat with my head between my knees. Just to be alone again, away from all of that humanity that echoed my own, made me feel better. The sadness and nausea began to subside. Then I heard the door of the building open and footsteps behind me. It was Chickenhorse, coming to check on me. I wondered how she got elected. “Hey, just making sure you are okay.” “I’m not,” I said. “Do you want to come back inside?” “No, I need air.” “Do you think I should sit with you?” “I should probably just be left alone.” “We aren’t going to hurt you, Lucy.” I looked at her face. For a moment she didn’t look chickeny or horsey. Her eyes were big and brown and with her mouth closed she had nice, plump, red lips. Was it possible that she was actually pretty? “Listen,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on with you. What it is exactly that you’re doing. I mean, aside from the Jamie thing. But, whatever it is—you don’t have to do it.” I laughed out loud, a crazy-sounding laugh. I was crouched on a sidewalk in the middle of the day. Whatever I was doing, of course I had to do it. “You don’t really know me,” I said. “Maybe not,” she said. “But I relate.” I didn’t want her to relate. I didn’t want to be like her. But I knew she was being honest. “So what’s the solution? Never date again?” I asked. She looked at me. “Honestly, I don’t know.