Suzanne Finnamore Quotes - Page 3

I travel back in time, falling back into what I know for certain, the historical data I cling to in order to not go mad, not assume I made a suicidal and well-informed error in marrying this man.

I played possum. I did this, as the possum does, out of fear.

I am not ready to think of him as either insane or evil, to consider in full how I could love and have a child with such a person. I am not ready to think about anything, except ways in which this may still be averted.

It´s a little song about abandonment, and it goes something like this....

I should have known then it wasn´t nothing, as he called it. But I was eight months pregnant. No sense closing the barn door now, or so I thought. I swallowed the nothing, straightaway after the usual tears and denial.

I feel angry but not homocidal; this may be unlooked-for progress.

The whole world seems tilted, my inner ear displaced by a hole where my spouse used to be.

My mind floats like ash. I blame myself most cruelly.

I want to own this transition, not to simply swallow the shame of it entire. I will push for every little irony.

This people know where their husbands are. I would like to vomit. I would like to vomit my soul out.

This is much easier than when N left. Our son is unable to grasp and simultaneously turn doorknobs yet. If only this trick could be unlearned by men over thirty, many more families would celebrate Christmas together.

The abandonment came, and now this shabby bacchanal.

Irrationally, I think, Will You Marry Me? Four words. I Want a Divorce. Four words. I would like time to count the letters as well, but there is not time.

This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days. You still love the cat and presumably the cat still loves you, or some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference.

They ought to do away with divorce settlements. Instead, both parties should flip a coin. The winner gets to stay where he or she is and keep everything. The loser goes to Paraguay. That´s it.

Flannel shirts should be outlawed for ex husbands; I realize this now. Flannel shirts are to women what crotchless panties are to men.

The real genesis is forbidden to me, vis-à-vis N´s inability to confess even the mildest transgressions.

Conversely, I though humiliation would be everything, but it´s such a nothing.

We talk. Darlene worries aloud that her husband works with a lot of attractive young women; she herself is fourty. I tell her it´s not about age. "Little thing called character," I say, thinking, Accepting marital advice from me: the height of lunacy.

Together we agree that there are few tableaus more pathetic than a woman poring over a plethora of self-help books, while in a small café across town her husband is sharing a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé and fettucini Alfredo with a beautiful woman, fondling her fishnet knee and making careful plans to escape his life.