
In the Dream House

There is a Panamanian folktale that ends with: “My tale goes only to here; it ends, and the wind carries it off.” It’s the only true kind of ending.
Carmen Maria Machado • In the Dream House
Nonstalgia (noun) The unsettling sensation that you are never be able to fully access the past; that once you are departed from an event, some essential quality of it is lost forever. A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space,
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People love an idea, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Even if they only know how to do exactly the wrong thing.
Carmen Maria Machado • In the Dream House
“Myth: It’s only emotional/psychological, so that doesn’t count.” “Myth: I can handle it—unlike her last three lovers.” “Myth: Staying together and working it out is most important.” “Myth: We’re in therapy, so it’ll get fixed now.”
Carmen Maria Machado • In the Dream House
You have forgotten that leaving is an option.
Carmen Maria Machado • In the Dream House
This is what I keep returning to: how people decide who is or is not an unreliable narrator. And after that decision has been made, what do we do with people who attempt to construct their own vision of justice?
Carmen Maria Machado • In the Dream House
This, maybe, was the worst part: the whole world was out to kill you both. Your bodies have always been abject. You were dropped from the boat of the world, climbed onto a piece of driftwood together, and after a perfunctory period of pleasure and safety, she tried to drown you. And so you aren’t just mad, or heartbroken: you grieve from the
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There is also the simple yet terrible fact that the legal system does not provide protection against most kinds of abuse—verbal, emotional, psychological—and even worse, it does not provide context.
Carmen Maria Machado • In the Dream House
Putting language to something for which you have no language is no easy feat.