by
Sally Rooney
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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)...
[...] Ultimately it didn't matter that Nick had taken the first opportunity to leave me as soon as Melissa wanted him again, or that my face and body were so ugly they made him sick, or that he hated having sex with me so much that he had to ask me to stop halfway through. That wasn't what my biographers would care about later. I thought about all the things I had never told Nick about myself, and I started to feel better then, as if my privacy extended all around me like a barrier protecting my body. I was a very autonomous and independent person with an inner life that nobody else had ever touched or perceived.
potential tags: self-loathing, or going off the rails, or jealousy
or something a little more abstract, that's also channeled in kafka/dostoevsky?
[...] He didn't call me the next day, or the day after that. Nobody did. Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen. I applied for jobs and turned up for seminars. Things went on.
Instead of thinking gigantic thoughts, I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I'm sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labor of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain that is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes.
When I opened my eyes I felt that I had understood something, and the cells of my body seemed to light up like millions of glowing points of contact, and I was aware of something profound. Then I stood up from my seat and collapsed.
labour theory of value lol
reminds me of some of the more thoughtful commentaries on the notre dame burning - sure you can rejoice in its burning as a symbol of colonialism, but also, who made the church? the french proletariat. and all are now dead
Maybe niceness is the wrong metric, I said.
Of course it's really about power, Bobbi agreed. But it's harder to work out who has the power, so instead we rely on "niceness" as a kind of stand-in. I mean this is an issue in public discourse. We end up asking like, is Israel "nicer" than Palestine. You know what I'm saying.