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

  I’m still angry but I can feel the anger being replaced by sadness, and I suspect that sadness and I can comfortably cohabitate in a way that anger and I have not been able to. CHAPTER 36Restoration of FaithBy the time Daisy arrives back home a few weeks later for her month-long winter break, Michael and Hudson are cautiously, tentatively, back in each other’s lives. Michael and I agree that we will each separately spend a few days with the kids in the house upstate, but we will overlap for Christmas so that neither of us has to miss being with them. Georgia is delighted, Hudson is wary and Daisy is indignant that it appears everyone but her has forgiven Michael, and we’re going to pretend we’re one big happy family for the holidays. I assure her that we all have different timelines and definitions of forgiveness, but neither he nor I are willing to forgo this time with our kids. I know I will have to accept that she may choose not to be with us and it pains me to imagine her spot empty under the Christmas tree. I do my best to assure her that Michael and I have made leaps and bounds of progress since she was last with us together and to please give us a chance. So here the five of us are on Christmas morning, the lopsided pine tree laden with twinkling lights and an overflow of brightly colored gifts stuffed beneath it, me in my fleecy pink bathrobe putting ancient Christmas albums on the record player and Michael snapping photos and refilling our mugs of coffee – for all intents and purposes, a family. Michael and I are on our best behavior with each other, nicer and more helpful than we ever were when we were married, working overtime to prove to the kids that this reorganized family does not have to be a tragedy. He stuffs piles of torn wrapping paper and bright red ribbons into garbage bags while I assemble the ingredients to make our traditional Christmas dumplings with my parents, who will arrive any minute. When we all sit down for dinner late that afternoon amidst steaming platters of pork dumplings, Michael is effusive in his praise, saying our dumplings get better every year, and I see my parents stiffen and then glance at the kids, trying to accept his presence for their sake. When Michael leaves the next morning, I silently congratulate myself, thinking how far we’ve come, how much we put aside successfully for the benefit of our kids. Daisy takes only a few hours to break my reverie. “Mom, I gave it a chance and I’m so glad you and Dad aren’t fighting anymore, but I’m never doing this again. It felt so normal to be with you guys together, to be the family we were, and now I feel bereft all over again.

• 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 The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  They had little to gain and much to lose; it was not their war, yet they helped to fight it because they were young and their nation was young, and the ideals of youth are eternally hopeful. In July came the Allied counter-offensive, and now in her moment of approaching triumph France knew to the full her great desolation, as it lay revealed by the retreating armies. For not only had there been a holocaust of homesteads, but the country was strewn with murdered trees, cut down in their hour of most perfect leafing; orchards struck to the ground, an orgy of destruction, as the mighty forces rolled back like a tide, to recoil on themselves—incredulous, amazed, maddened by the outrage of coming disaster. For mad they must surely have been, since no man is a more faithful lover of trees than the German. Stephen as she drove through that devastated country would find herself thinking of Martin Hallam—Martin who had touched the old thorns on the hills with such respectful and pitiful fingers: ‘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.’ Martin had believed in a heaven for trees, a forest heaven for all the faithful; and looking at those pitiful, leafy corpses, Stephen would want to believe in that heaven. Until lately she had not thought of Martin for years, he belonged to a past that was better forgotten, but now she would sometimes wonder about him. Perhaps he was dead, smitten down where he stood, for many had perished where they stood, like the orchards. It was strange to think that he might have been here in France, have been fighting and have died quite near her. But perhaps he had not been killed after all—she had never told Mary about Martin Hallam. All roads of thought seemed to lead back to Mary; and these days, in addition to fears for her safety, came a growing distress at what she must see—far more terrible sights than the patient wounded. For everywhere now lay the wreckage of war, sea-wrack spued up by a poisonous ocean—putrefying, festering in the sun; breeding corruption to man’s seed of folly. Twice lately, while they had been driving together, they had come upon sights that Stephen would have spared her. There had been that shattered German gun-carriage with its stiff, dead horses and its three dead gunners—horrible death, the men’s faces had been black like the faces of negroes, black and swollen from gas, or was it from putrefaction? There had been the deserted and wounded charger with its fore-leg hanging as though by a rag. Near by had been lying a dead young Uhlan, and Stephen had shot the beast with his revolver, but Mary had suddenly started sobbing: ‘Oh, God! Oh, God! It was dumb—it couldn’t speak.

• 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 The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  In the hands of his child he was utterly helpless. Then Jamie had gone to Inverness in order the better to study music, but every week-end she had spent at the manse, there had been no real break in her friendship with Barbara; indeed they had seemed more devoted than ever, no doubt because of these forced separations. Two years later the minister had suddenly died, leaving his little all to Jamie. She had had to turn out of the old, grey manse, and had taken a room in the village near Barbara. But antagonism, no longer restrained through respect for the gentle and child-like pastor, had made itself very acutely felt—hostile they had been, those good people, to Jamie. Barbara had wept. ‘Jamie, let’s go away . . . they hate us. Let’s go where nobody knows us. I’m twenty-one now, I can go where I like, they can’t stop me. Take me away from them, Jamie!’ Miserable, angry, and sorely bewildered, Jamie had put her arm round the girl. ‘Where can I take you, you poor little creature? You’re not strong, and I’m terribly poor, remember.’ But Barbara had continued to plead. ‘I’ll work, I’ll scrub floors, I’ll do anything, Jamie, only let’s get away where nobody knows us!’ So Jamie had turned to her music master in Inverness, and had begged him to help her. What could she do to earn her living? And because this man believed in her talent, he had helped her with advice and a small loan of money, urging her to go to Paris and study to complete her training in composition. ‘You’re really too good for me,’ he had told her; ‘and out there you could live considerably cheaper. For one thing the exchange would be in your favour. I’ll write to the head of the Conservatoire this evening.’ That had been shortly after the Armistice, and now here they were together in Paris. As for Pat, she collected her moths and her beetles, and when fate was propitious an occasional woman. But fate was so seldom propitious to Pat—Arabella had put this down to the beetles. Poor Pat, having recently grown rather gloomy, had taken to quoting American history, speaking darkly of blood-tracks left on the snow by what she had christened: ‘The miserable army.’ Then too she seemed haunted by General Custer, that gallant and very unfortunate hero. ‘It’s Ouster’s last ride, all the time,’ she would say. ‘No good talking, the whole darned world’s out to scalp us!’ As for Margaret Roland, she was never attracted to anyone young and whole-hearted and free—she was, in fact, a congenital poacher. While as for Wanda, her loves were so varied that no rule could be discovered by which to judge them.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The cottages were badly in need of repair; a melancholy spot it looked, this Hameau, in spite of the birds that sang in its trees and the golden glint of the afternoon sunshine. On the drive back to Paris they were all very silent. Puddle was feeling too tired to talk, and Stephen was oppressed by a sense of sadness— the vast and rather beautiful sadness that may come to us when we have looked upon beauty, the sadness that aches in the heart of Versailles. Brockett was content to sit opposite Stephen on the hard little let-down seat of her motor. He might have been comfortable next to the driver, but instead he preferred to sit opposite Stephen, and he too was silent, surreptitiously watching the expression of her face in the gathering twilight. When he left them he said with his cold little smile: ‘To-morrow, before you’ve forgotten Versailles, I want you to come to the Conciergerie. It’s very enlightening—cause and effect.’ At that moment Stephen disliked him intensely. All the same he had stirred her imagination. 3 In the weeks that followed, Brockett showed Stephen just as much of Paris as he wished her to see, and this principally consisted of the tourist’s Paris. Into less simple pastures he would guide her later on, always provided that his interest lasted. For the present, however, he considered it wiser to tread delicately like Agag. The thought of this girl had begun to obsess him to a very unusual extent. He who had prided himself on his skill in ferreting out other people’s secrets, was completely baffled by this youthful abnormal. That she was abnormal he had no doubt whatever, but what he was keenly anxious to find out was just how her own abnormality struck her—he felt pretty sure that she worried about it. And he genuinely liked her. Unscrupulous he might be in his vivisection of men and women; cynical too when it came to his pleasures, himself an invert, secretly hating the world which he knew hated him in secret; and yet in his way he felt sorry for Stephen, and this amazed him, for Jonathan Brockett had long ago, as he thought, done with pity. But his pity was a very poor thing at best, it would never defend and never protect her; it would always go down before any new whim, and his whim at the moment was to keep her in Paris. All unwittingly Stephen played into his hands, while having no illusions about him. He represented a welcome distraction that helped her to keep her thoughts off England.

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

  * One morning, Georgia woke up in my bed, where she had been sleeping since Michael’s departure, and asked, “Is six weeks a long time?” I launched into a long, rambling answer about how it would depend on the context, how long she had already been waiting and how excited she was for what was coming. She gave me a confused look, making it clear that my abstract answer was not in line with the topic at hand, and tried again. “Daddy’s been gone for six weeks. Is that long enough for you to make up with him?” “Oh, Georgia,” I said, deflating. “I thought it would be, but it’s not. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to take.” “But you said three weeks, so how much longer?” she asked, her voice rising in panic. “How much time will be enough time?” “I’m so sorry. I wish I could make this go away, but I can’t. I don’t have an amount of time to give you, but Daddy and I both love you so much and will do anything we can to make this easier for you,” I said. “Easier would be if Daddy could come back home,” she said, sobbing, as I held her. Silently, to myself, I agreed. That certainly would be easier, and for the thousandth time since our separation had begun, I wished I could blink and make this all disappear. * In May, at the three-month mark of our separation, I saw no end in sight to my ambivalence about my marriage. I was still seeing my own therapist once a week, and she helped me accept that a clear path was not going to be in my sightline anytime soon. It was with this in mind that I texted Michael and asked him to find a one-year lease on an apartment, explaining that the pressure of a deadline for him to move back home had become unbearable. Our therapist had told us when we first started seeing her that the longer couples stayed separated the lower the chance they would ever reunite, but I could take or leave our marriage at this point. Friends asked for updates, wanting to know what I thought would happen, and I would give them 50:50 odds, some days feeling sure we were done and others unable to wrap my head around a future without him. I still could not bring myself to look at him, but letting go of our future together was intolerable. For most of our adult lives we had been one unit; I could not fathom our being divided without it killing me. Already I was having to allow our past to take new shapes and colors, but to obliterate our future? In couples’ therapy one day, I silently raged as Michael explained why he could not completely cut this other woman out of his life.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  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. And Brianne, well, at least she had something to live for besides plastic surgery. Something to tether her to the Earth. Maybe she wasn’t totally lying when she said she had a full life. Or, at least, that her life felt full. Who was I to judge anyone? I certainly didn’t know any more than they did, crawling in here on my hands and knees. I told them about Jamie and the pregnancy. I pretended that was the cause of my tears. It was something legible, a rejection they could understand. To recount the tale of Theo would be too far beyond their comprehension. What could I even say? I’m mourning a man I’ve been seeing secretly this whole time. He might be in his forties but he looks twenty-one. No, I didn’t meet him online, I met him in the ocean. By the way, he has a tail. It was hard to grieve like this, to mourn one man while pretending to be mourning another. Why were some sadnesses so much more permissible than others? Why did it seem like everyone was going to be okay except for me? Even Chickenhorse was in good spirits, letting the group know that she had finally decided to try going on a date. She met a guy at the dog park and he invited her to a pit-bull rescue benefit. “I assume he’s an asshole,” she said. “But I don’t think he’s married. So I’m going.” — When group ended I stayed back a minute to talk to Dr.

• 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)

  The wounded were patient and fatalistic, like the very old women back in the field. The only difference between them being that the men had themselves become as a field laid bare to a ruthless and bloody hoeing. Some of them had not even a blanket to protect them from the biting cold of the wind. A Poilu with a mighty wound in the belly, must lie with the blood congealing on the bandage. Next to him lay a man with his face half blown away, who, God alone knew why, remained conscious. The abdominal case was the first to be handled, Stephen herself helped to lift his stretcher. He was probably dying, but he did not complain except inasmuch as he wanted his mother. The voice that emerged from his coarse, bearded throat was the voice of a child demanding its mother. The man with the terrible face tried to speak, but when he did so the sound was not human. His bandage had slipped a little to one side, so that Stephen must step between him and Mary, and hastily readjust the bandage. ‘Get back to the ambulance! I shall want you to drive.’ In silence Mary obeyed her. And now began the first of those endless journeys from the Poste de Secours to the Field Hospital. For twenty-four hours they would ply back and forth with their light Ford ambulances. Driving quickly because the lives of the wounded might depend on their speed, yet with every nerve taut to avoid, as far as might be, the jarring of the hazardous roads full of ruts and shell-holes. The man with the shattered face started again, they could hear him above the throb of the motor. For a moment they stopped while Stephen listened, but his lips were not there . . . an intolerable sound. ‘Faster, drive faster, Mary!’ Pale, but with firmly set, resolute mouth, Mary Llewellyn drove faster. When at last they reached the Field Hospital, the bearded Poilu with the wound in his belly was lying very placidly on his stretcher; his hairy chin pointing slightly upward. He had ceased to speak as a little child—perhaps, after all, he had found his mother.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She set out briskly in the direction of Newquay. 2 During those long, anxious weeks in Cornwall, it was borne in on Stephen as never before how wide was the gulf between her and her mother, how completely they two must always stand divided. Yet looking at Anna’s quiet ageing face, the girl would be struck afresh by its beauty, a beauty that seemed to have mollified the years, to have risen triumphant over time and grief. And now as in the days of her childhood, that beauty would fill her with a kind of wonder; so calm it was, so assured, so complete—then her mother’s deep eyes, blue like distant mountains, and now with that far-away look in their blueness, as though they were gazing into the distance. Stephen’s heart would suddenly tighten a little; a sense of great loss would descend upon her, together with the sense of not fully understanding just what she had lost or why she had lost it—she would stare at Anna as a thirsty traveller in the desert will stare at a mirage of water. And one evening there came a preposterous impulse—the impulse to confide in this woman within whose most gracious and perfect body her own anxious body had lain and quickened. She wanted to speak to that motherhood, to implore, nay, compel its understanding. To say: ‘Mother, I need you. I’ve lost my way—give me your hand to hold in the darkness.’ But good God, the folly, the madness of it! The base betrayal of such a confession! Angela delivered over, betrayed—the unthinkable folly, the madness of it. Yet sometimes as Anna and she sat together looking out at the misty Cornish coast-line, hearing the dull, heavy throb of the sea and the calling of sea-gulls the one to the other—as they sat there together it would seem to Stephen that her heart was so full of Angela Crossby, all the bitterness, all the sweetness of her, that the mother-heart beating close by her own must surely, in its turn, be stirred to beat faster, for had she not once sheltered under that heart? And so extreme was her need becoming, that now she must often find Anna’s cool hand and hold it a moment or two in her own, trying to draw from it some consolation. But the touch of that cool, pure hand would distress her, causing her spirit to ache with longing for the simple and upright and honourable things that had served many simple and honourable people. Then all that to some might appear uninspiring, would seem to her very fulfilling and perfect.

• 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 The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  At Morton she stopped the car by the lakes and sat staring through the trees at the glint of water. For a long while she sat there without knowing why, unless it was that she wished to remember. But she found that she could not even be certain of the kind of dress that Angela had worn—it had been of some soft stuff, that much she remembered, so soft that it had easily torn, for the rest her memories of it were vague—though she very much wanted to remember that dress. A faint rumble of thunder came out of the west, where the clouds were banking up ominously purple. Some uncertain and rather hysterical swallows flew high and then low at the sound of the thunder. Her sense of depression was now much less gentle, it increased every moment, turning to sadness. She was sad in spirit and mind and body—her body felt dejected, she was sad all over. And now some one was whistling down by the stables, old Williams, she suspected, for the whistle was tuneless. The loss of his teeth had disgruntled his whistle; yes, she was sure that that must be Williams. A horse whinnied as one bucket clanked against another—sounds came clearly this evening; they were watering the horses. Anna’s young carriage horses would be pawing their straw, impatient because they were feeling thirsty. Then a gate slammed. That would be the gate of the meadow where the heifers were pastured—it was yellow with king-cups. One of the men from the home farm was going his rounds, securing all gates before sunset. Something dropped on the bonnet of the car with a ping. Looking up she met the eyes of a squirrel; he was leaning well forward on his tiny front paws, peering crossly; he had dropped his nut on the bonnet. She got out of the car and retrieved his supper, throwing it under his tree while he waited. Like a flash he was down and then back on his tree, devouring the nut with his legs well straddled. All around were the homely activities of evening, the watering of horses, the care of cattle—pleasant, peaceable things that preceded the peace and repose of the coming nightfall. And suddenly Stephen longed to share them, an immense need to share them leapt up within her, so that she ached with this urgent longing that was somehow a part of her bodily dejection.