by
Sally Rooney
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I've never worked hard at anything, I said.
That must be why you study English.
Then he said that he was just joking, and actually he had won his school's gold medal for composition. I love poetry, he said. I love Yeats.
Yeah, I said. If there's one thing you can say for fascism, it had some good poets.
He didn't have anything else to say about poetry after that. [...]
rough
When I got home, I went to my room and took a single plastic-wrapped bandage from the drawer. I am normal, I thought. I have a body like anyone else. Then I scratched my arm open until it bled, just a faint spot of blood, widening into a droplet. I counted to three and afterward opened the bandage, placed it carefully over my arm, and disposed of the plastic wrap.
[...] I knew what I was going to tell him, the most desperate thing I could possibly tell him, as if even in the depths of indignity I craved something worse.
The problem isn't that you're married, I said. The problem is that I love you and you obviously don't love me.
He took a deep breath in and said: you're being unbelievably dramatic, Frances.
Fuck you, I said.
I slammed his bedroom door hard on my way out. He shouted something at me on my way down the stairs but I didn't hear what it was. I walked to the bus stop, knowing that my humiliation was now complete. Even though I had known Nick didn't love me, I had continued to let him have sex with me whenever he wanted, out of desperation and a naive hope that he didn't understand what he was inflicting on me. Now even that hope was gone. He knew that I loved him, that he was exploiting my tender feelings for him, and he didn't care. On the bus home I chewed the inside of my cheek and stared out the black window until I tasted blood.
rough
She seemed irritable, almost about to express something, but then her eyes became calm and remote.
You think everyone you like is special, she said.
I tried to sit up and the bathtub was hard on my bones.
I'm just a normal person, she said. When you get to like someone, you make them feel like they're different from everyone else. You're doing it with Nick, you did it with me once.
No.
She looked up at me , without any cruelty or anger at all, and said: I'm not trying to upset you.
But you are upsetting me, I said.
Well, I'm sorry.
inspo for eve (to neil). because he believes he himself is special, therefore he wouldnt spend time with someone who wasn't also special
I feel like shit lately, she said. All this stuff at home, I don't know. You think you're the kind of person who can deal with something and then it happens and you realize you can't.
inspo for neil, he maybe admits that to himself later once startup issues get out of control (maybe on his late night walk?)
[...] I realized my life would be full of mundane physical suffering, and that there was nothing special about it. Suffering wouldn't make me special, and pretending not to suffer wouldn't make me special. Talking about it, or even writing about it, would not transform the suffering into something useful. Nothing would. [...]
relevant for maximiser story?
[...] I didn't know what I wanted from him. What I seemed to want, though I didn't like to believe this, was for him to renounce every other person and thing in his life and pledge himself to me exclusively. This was outlandish not only because I had also slept with someone else during our relationship but because even now I was often preoccupied by other people, particularly Bobbi and how much I missed her. I didn't believe that the time I spent thinking about Bobbi had anything to do with Nick, but the time he spent thinking about Melissa I felt as a personal affront.
potential tag: self-loathing (through pure honesty)
to think about: the difference between knowing that you should be reasonable and having the ability to be reasonable. for panopticon: neil coming to terms with recognition that other people are not merely NPCs (through viewing bryan from comrade to villain to, later, whole complex person)
tag for panopticon?
He was oddly quiet for a few seconds and I worried he had something else bad to tell me. Finally he said: I know you don't like to seem upset by things. But it's not a sign of weakness to have feelings. A kind of hard smile came over my face then, and I felt the radiant energy of spite fill my body.
ooof this was hard to read
I was shivering. I tried to think about things that made me feel safe and normal. Material possessions: the white blouse drying on a hanger in the bathroom, the alphabetized novels on my bookshelf, the set of green china cups.
weirdly poignant (similar vibe to the recognition that we are nothing but bodies)
Was it not good? I said.
Can we talk?
You used to like it, didn't you?
Can I ask you something? he said. Do you want me to leave her?
I looked at him then. He looked tired, and I could see that he hated everything I was doing to him. My body felt completely disposable, like a placeholder for something more valuable. I fantasized about taking it apart and lining my limbs up side by side to compare them.
No, I said. I don't want that.
I don't know what to do. I've been feeling fucking awful about it. You seem so upset with me and I don't know how I can make you happy.
Well, maybe we shouldn't see each other any more.
Yeah, he said. Okay. I guess you're probably right.
the misunderstanding here is so painful, so brutal, it seeps out of the page like poison
reading someone, concluding the wrong thing (based on fears), then saying something that makes the other person conclude the wrong thing (based on their own fears)...