The idea of eating according to another person’s whims, eating what doesn’t necessarily accord with the other choices of my day, frightens me.

The momentary hardness that crossed his face during arguments was total now, and occupied every part of him.

That is, I could understand that a truthful account of it, according to actual events, would sound disturbing, but I did not feel disturbed by it. It was only that other people would be incapable of understanding the way in which objective reality did not account for its essential truth.

I wanted to be alone and catalogue all the feelings I was experiencing, examine them one by one.

a way that made me feel small and contained and happy.

I said through my huddling and hiding that I was nothing, and I was happy to be nothing if nothing was what pleased him best. If nothing was the least trouble, then I would be it, and gladly. I would be completely blank and still if that was what worked, or as loud as he needed me to be to take up his silences. I would be energetic and lively if he

Was he right to be disgusted? Was it all a show, a ploy to get sympathy? I can only say if it was one, it was both unconscious and misguided. It never succeeded in eliciting any good or compassionate feeling, and yet I kept doing it. I never wanted to. It seemed as impossible to restrain as vomit, and its ability to repel him only made me do it

I didn’t want her near me, because she was the only one able to see me for what I was, but I couldn’t lose her for the very same reason.

You earned the eventual love story with your restraint.