I’ve lived hand-to-mouth my entire life, so I’m used to it. I wouldn’t know what to do with money except piss it away as quickly as possible.”

Her mother had been both pathologically jealous and envious, even—or sometimes especially—of her own daughter,

Wayward

Greta considered her own behavior around red flags. Her habit was not to ignore them so much as to ingest them, a somewhat laborious mental production that involved placing them in a stockpot with butter, herbs, and mirepoix; cooking over low heat without browning; adding red meat, additional red flags, a jug of red wine; and voilà, four hours at a

“maudlin.”

Although she was newly single and happier than she’d been in years, a small part of her was still ready to die, and still enjoyed telling lies.

FEW: All I’m saying is that trauma doesn’t get you a lifelong get-out-of-jail-free card. It also doesn’t necessarily confer wisdom, or the right to pontificate, which I realize I’m doing right now.

FEW: Someone who can’t stop saying the word “trauma.” Trauma people are almost as unbearable to me as Trump people. If you try suggesting that they let go of their suffering, their victimhood, they act retraumatized. It’s like, yes, what happened to you is shitty, I’m not denying that, but why do you keep rolling around in your own shit? If they

she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker, and she barely left the house.