Emma in the Night

It has also been explained to me that my mother is a pathological narcissist, which means the scream inside her got so big, she had to become someone else, the prettiest girl in the world, the smartest woman in the world, and the best mother in the world. And she had to make everyone love her that way by using every weapon she had. Sex. Cruelty. Fear.

I would rather live half as long feeling alive than twice as long feeling dead already.

Life feels too strong to go away without some kind of agony.

No one who has died can tell us what it feels like.

she had not once considered that her husband was having sex with a younger, prettier woman. I think this upset her more than the fact that her husband was cheating.

That is where desire begins, and it does not just vanish the minute we command it to. I felt things I didn’t want to feel. Longing. Hunger. Disgust.

there is evil in the world and that evil can dress up as love so convincingly that it blinds you to the truth.

People will stoop to low levels just to punish their spouse for leaving them.

Ones who have a scream inside them and ones who don’t.

We were young, but we still understood why our father was driven mad by our mother’s indifference, and how his madness had taken over every part of his brain and his heart so there was nothing left for us.