Suzanne Finnamore Quotes

Such silence has an actual sound, the sound of disappearance.

I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.

I used to loathe ambivalence; now I adore it. Ambivalence is my new best friend.

You are the closest I will ever come to magic.

Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.

I remember one desolate Sunday night, wondering: Is this how I´m going to spend the rest of my life? Marrid to someone who is perpetually distracted and somewhat wistful, as though a marvelous party is going on in the next room, which but for me he could be attending?

A heart can stop beating for a while, one can still live.

I know one thing about men," Bunny says with finality, leaving the room to check on A. "They never die when you want them to.

He left a bit too easily and with obvious relief. His feet were swift and sure on the muddy path.

They feel life is for the taking, and that everyone deserves happiness no matter what the cost. I must remember these tricks if I ever decide to have my soul surgically removed.

Already things are changing; it´s starting with small shit but oh it´s starting, the change, the irrevocable, impossible change.

The snag about marriage is, it isn´t worth the divorce.

Surprises, I feel now, are primarily a form of violence.

I have a new mantra, which I chant softly to myself: "Oh My God Oh My God.

I am going insane. Yes. That is what´s happening. Good. Insane.

Bushwhacked, I examine my hands. Same hands. Rings still there but no longer valid.

I love you as the mother of my child": the kiss of death. Mother of His Child: demotion. I am beginning to see this truism: Mothers are not always wives. I have been stripped of a piece of self.

I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.

He announces that lately he keeps losing things. "Like your wife and child," I want to say, but don´t. At fourty, I´ve learned not to say everything clever, not to score every point.

Any way I slice reality it comes out poorly, and I feel an urge to not exist, something I have never felt before; and now here it comes with conviction, almost panic. I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.

So many events and moments that seemed insignificant add up. I remember how for the last Valentine´s Day, N gave flowers but no card. In restaurants, he looked off into the middle distance while my hand would creep across the table to hold his. He would always let go first. I realize I can´t remember his last spontaneous gesture of affection.

I've felt basically lucky ever since, almost every day of my life. That's something else love should make you feel. It should make you fell fortunate. It will be made clear to you in a stray gesture, the line of a throat. Something in the hands. There may or may not be any music playing. But there will be a certain velocity of the spirit, a sensation of dropping through clear space unimpeded, and you think, This is the one. I found you.

When you moved, I felt squeezed with a wild infatuation and protectiveness. We are one. Nothing, not even death, can change that.

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

Take me now, God!" I shout to the inky sky. "I´m ready." "You´re not ready. You´re not even divorced yet," Bunny says. "You cannot die married to that man.

How do you know? How best to ensure his nervous breakdown?" I ask. "Keep going," Christian says. "Just go on as if nothing has happened. We all hate that.

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.

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

Someday I will have revenge. I know in advance to keep this to myself, and everyone will be happier. I do understand that I am expected to forgive N and his girlfriend in a timely fashion, and move on to a life of vegetarian cooking and difficult yoga positions and self-realization, and make this so much easier and more pleasant for all concerned.

God is great and God is good," Lisa says. "But where are the Apache attack helicopters when you need them?

I´ve blown past Bitter and am already in the heart of Apathy.

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.

All my life, I should not have worried so much about looking foolish; I see that now. Signs matter. And all waves are dangerous, especially the ones you refuse to see coming.

It´s like watching someone do a triple backflip dismount and land on two feet, solid, arms splayed in the air. I know I could never do it, don´t even know where I would begin to learn, but some people are built for it. He was handcrafted to leave, had practiced on other women since adolescence. I was one of an unnumbered series.

I feel incendiary, a wildfire. My spirit licks at the gates of a very elaborate, customized, and distracting emotional Hades.

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.

You can hear now. Your inner ear is formed. I shout "I love you" into the bedroom. Then I feel stupid. Then I don't. This is pretty much the story of my life.

Daily I walk around my small, picturesque town with a thought bubble over my head: Person Going Through A Divorce. When I look at other people, I automatically form thought bubbles over their heads. Happy Couple With Stroller. Innocent Teenage Girl With Her Whole Life Ahead Of Her. Content Grandmother And Grandfather Visiting Town Where Their Grandchildren Live With Intact Parents. Secure Housewife With Big Diamond. Undamaged Group Of Young Men On Skateboards. Good Man With Baby In BabyBjörn Who Loves His Wife. Dogs Who Never Have To Worry. Young Kids Kissing Publicly. Then every so often I see one like me, one of the shambling gaunt women without makeup, looking older than she is: Divorcing Woman Wondering How The Fuck This Happened.

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

Even better liars can put on a convincing smile, but their eyes aren´t smiling.

Soon he was online every night until one or two a.m. Often he would wake up at three of four a.m. and go back online. He would shut down the computer screen when I walked in. In the past, he used to take the laptop to bed with him and we would both be on our laptops, hips touching. He stopped doing that, slipping off to his office instead and closing the door even when A was asleep. He started closing doors behind him. I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.

How can I grieve what is still in motion?" I ask her. "Shoes are still dropping all over the place. I´m not kidding," I say. "It´s Normandy out there.

Yes. THANK YOU. And say hello to Judas Iscariot.

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.

Divorce is a snakebite. One´s next thought should not be, Where am I going to find another snake?

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.

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

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

My mother is a firm believer in the long pause, useful in interrogations, proclamations of truth, and the occasional cutting dead of someone without their knowing it.

I know my vision is impaired and cannot be trusted with even the simplest tasks, much less dating. Not that I´ve come within talon distance of a man.

I am replete with stamina in finding out every single fact I can about this whole affair. Yet, I think, do I want to pull that thread? Do I want to unleash the truth, unravel deceit, and kill reality as I´ve known it? It is irreparable, if I do, from the moment we met until now. It is long. If I discover too much that is false about what I thought my past was, Time will be skewed even further. I already have a poor connection with the present. Example: I have no sense of what day it is. It´s better.

I sensed he may have occasionally strayed in some of his past relationships. It was something I felt but ignored, a rent in the fabric of an otherwise splendid garment I thought I could mend. I thought I could live with it—I thought, yes and I admit it, that I would be different. That at the very least, middle age and children would slow him down; however, they seemed to accelerate his pace.

The abandonment came, and now this shabby bacchanal.

I saw my reflection in their eyes, but not the men themselves, not clearly. This preserved the idea that all intelligent and even vaguely attractive men were essentially good. Delusion detest focus and romance provides the veil.

The marriage is over; counseling is the eulogy. The relationship autopsy is the wake.

Nothing´s permanent. Nothing.

Much like trains in India, grief is a circular, irrational process with no discernible rhythm or timetable. Here it comes, there it goes.

In so many senseless deaths, beauty is to blame.

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

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

It would be sad and wrong in so many ways to self-combust at this time.

The swans are unnaturally beautiful. They mate for life. I wish they could talk. I have questions.

I´ve blown it, the whole grisly charade.

The Betty Lady explains love and splitting up: "It´s like playing the shell game with Jesus. You can´t figure anything out; it´s best not to try. You´ll just humiliate yourself.

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.

I´m just not sending out the right vibe lately. Perhaps the fact that I wear stained sweatpants and free T-shirts is holding me back. I just can´t seem to get back into the intelligent-slut-for-hire outfits that lure men; even shoes with laces evade me. Plus my hair is Fran Lebowitz-esque. I think my eyes are getting closer together. I don´t know.

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.

Marriage is a conspiracy from Tiffany, florists, the diamond industry, and Christian fundamentalists. The only thing good about it is the diamond ring, the wedding gifts, and the honeymoon.

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.

It had all seemed as inevitable as sunset. Instead it was the beauty of the sun glinting upon the scythe.

How could you do that to me?" I repeat. I don´t have to itemize. He knows what I speak of. Eventually N produces three answers, in this order: 1. "Because I am a complete rotter." I silently agree, but it´s a cop-out: I have maggots, therefore I am dead. 2. "I was stressed at work and unhappy and we were always fighting...and you know I was just crazy..." I cut him off, saying, "You don´t get to be crazy. You did exactly what you chose to do." Which is true, he did. It is what he has always done. He therefore seems slightly puzzled at the need for further diagnosis, which may explain his third response: 3. "I don´t know." This, I feel instinctively, is the correct answer. How can I stay angry with him for being what he is? I was, after all, his wife, and I chose him. No coincidences, that´s what Freud said. None. Ever. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and walk toward the truck, saying to his general direction, "Fine. At least now I know: You don´t know." I stop and turn around and fire one more question: a bullet demanding attention in the moment it enters the skin and spreads outward, an important bullet that must be acknowledged. "What did you feel?" After a lengthy pause, he answers. "I felt nothing." And that, I realize too late, was not the whole truth, but was a valid part of the truth. Oh, and welcome to the Serengeti. That too.

I know I am playing out some tragic Greek play and I´m horrified, but the show must go on.

I review what I know once again, confronting the monolith now alien and almost unconnected to me: my marriage.

This does not escape my notice, it is a context. I resent the fact of a context; my social status has shifted and no one is going to acknowldege it, that´s certain. I´m expected to be Brave and Rise Above. I dress for the role; I must look far better now that I did when I was married. I must look pulled together into a nice tight Hermès knot of self-containment. I don´t make the rules; I just do my best to follow them.

Then they took us to the birthing suite, which I call the electronic bullshit room because it's full of all sorts of electronic bullshit we can't fathom but are just glad to have on principle.

Why is edamame always ready to expire? It´s so urgent for a vegetable. Edamame. It sounds like an assisted form of suicide. Is there an advertising concept in this?

There is that, and there is also the Irreconcilable Differences line. It seems so catchall, so vague. You could say that about anyone, any man and woman at all. Jesus and Mary Magdalene: "Irreconcilable Differences." JFK and Jackie, anyone at all. It´s built into the man-woman thing. What kind of paltry reason is that? "Insanity" is another box to be checked on the divorce petition, the only alternative to "Irreconcilable Differences." I would like to check it.

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.

I think, This will be the last horrible thing I have to go through, until I meet someone else and the whole travesty begins again. I myself bear a sign that reads DON´T DATE ME, I CHAIN-SMOKE, I´M BITTER, AND I INCLUDE GRABBY TODDLER, and this has dramatically decreased my social life. I have resigned myself to a lifetime of jalapeño poppers and cheap wine and Frasier reruns.

After you are here, I will try not to become one of those parents who brag incessantly about their children, who force them to recite the alphabet backward or sing the Lord's Prayer in German to horrified dinner guests. One of those parents who tell people who aren't interested and haven't askd what their progeny's grade-point average is, what school they go to, how handsome and brilliant and psychic they are. If something goes awry and I do become one of those parents, you have my permission to sneak into my bedroom while I am sleeping and pinch my nostrils shut.

I know now with blind certainty that no matter what, eventually marriage is just two financially interdependent strangers staring across the kitchen table at each other. They have backpacks slung across their bodies, containing their sexual and romantic history and unresolved issues and family memories. And there´s nothing but cold cereal, because the days of flaky croissants and foamy cappuccino are over. Reality reclines on top of the refrigerator, leering down with a wry yet tender expression. And one day it all just collapses and the backpacks are hauled away to another kitchen table.

You get what you give," we will tell his sorry, selfish ass." The Betty Lady has spoken. I detect a Bronx accent. "But," I demur, "it will make the other woman say, ´See? She IS a jealous and paranoid and pushy wife.´" The Betty Lady rips open a cell phone statement with a nail file and, without looking up at me, says, "Let me tell you something, honey. In my experience? The only thing they care about is what they see in the mirror each morning and WINNING...or their perception of winning.

For me, it´s sloth," I say. "Hedonistic sloth and escapism.

Just know that it is impossible to feel joy while you are feeling cynicism. It is like wearing tight shoes and trying to mambo.

For most people, I edit. Most people are definitely getting along on the Cliffs Notes.

It’s adult swim time and I’m diving in here at the shallow end.

God works in mysterious ways, baby, and there is never more evidence of this than when your life is going along fairly well, actually sailing. The sensation of wind through your hair becomes, for an extremely brief time, commonplace. It is then that God lowers the cosmic boom. He will not show up; that is the kind view. The unkind view is that he sits back to watch with a high-ball and a bowl of nuts.

I think: I would like to take N back to a story right now, like a rake. I would say, "Oh, this rake is uneven. Do you have any where the tines go straight across?" I would like to do a straight exchange. But there are things that cannot be returned. Errant husbands are one of them. Wives are not. Wives can be exchanged; I have always known this.

I don't know how I got Michael. Maybe I just had a store credit from some other very lonely and shitty life.

We never remember what is important, only what matters to us

Wonderful; such an active word——to be full of wonder.

If you are a girl, I don't think you should necessarily become a lesbian, although if the idea appeals to you, I wouldn't say anything against it. I wouldn't try to stop you. Men can be obstinate and difficult to live with. Unlike myself, a perfectly reasonable woman unless shown a bag in which I am to place my vomit. IF you are a boy, I apologize.

To keep myself from harming or calling N and to stave off the rage and despair, I focus on my extraordinary son, drink midrange Chardonnay every night after he is asleep, and make a barrage of late-night mail-order retail purchases placed from the couch. The couch has officially become my second battle station. I am angry and I have credit And I´m all blackened inside; I should wear a pointy witch hat around Larkspur as I go to the bank and drop A off at day care. It would be more honest.

People told me not to get married; I didn´t listen. No one ever listens, it seems to me now. Perhaps people should stop trying to communicate. N was not a communicator; early on, I´d insisted on communication. Now I see his point acutely. I would love to have him back to not communicate with me. I would never ask for communication again, I would simply go elsewhere for the deep fish. Also, I´m not at all sure I want to hear what he has to say in this new vista. This works out well.

Gains There is no man in the house that I have to try to make happy. There are no more arguments, or nights when I turn away from N in quiet dispair as he snores with an entitled regularity. Everything also stays cleaner; the toilet seat is perpetually down. I have the remote control to the television; no one can take that away. I can watch the Lifetime channel without derision.

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. People should be informed, as adopting a cat and becoming married take about the same amount of time and money and yet have such drastically different results. Indeed, except for the similar price($28)and the average time spent together, all similarity between pet adoption and marriage ends nastily.

Today you are thirteen weeks old and already controversial. You should know that the mention of the name Pablo is alarming to a very few, highly insignificant people. From this palsied paction there is occasionally the slightest pause, and then, 'Oh, really. Pablo.' Then with a small, self-depreciating chuckle, they might tilt their heads playfully and say something like 'Aren't you afraid people will think he's Mexican?' ... I find it amusing when they balk at Pablo, as though we were naming you Jesus H. Christ and jamming our nails into your hands. They seem to feel your name is up for general discussion, like naming a local bridge or a stray cat. Hmmm. Mr. Whiskers? I don't like Mr. Whiskers. I like the name Blackie.' Aren't you afraid people will think he's black?