Suzanne Finnamore Quotes

I was flying home from LA and all of a sudden I looked out at the clouds and I realized, Jesus we are really flying, and it was the most wonderful and miraculous thing, and about a minute later the feelings of anxiety and panic begin.
I feel the same way about marriage, today.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Naturally, I do blame Françoise. I blame her for having N in the first place. She was young, she was beautiful, she was married to a doctor, and she was intelligent. She could have abstained from producing her first son. It was wrong on a variety of levels.

He went on to say that if the Wicked Queen were around today, the whole story might have been different, because she would have looked in her Magic Mirror and said, If I got a little laser work around the jaw and eyelids, I might still be considered the Fairest in the Land.

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.

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

I feel angry but not homocidal; this may be unlooked-for progress.

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

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

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 Rings still there but no longer valid.

I´ve blown it, the whole grisly charade.

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.

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

What can you guarentee, O Nostradamus of Hayward?" I carp.

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.

There exists a sac of skin that distends when I'm tired, beneath my eye. Irreversible tissue damage. Something stretched too far, which has come back changed. I've thought of having it surgically corrected. Michael swears it's unnoticeable, the tiny pouch of loose skin. Yet not long ago, seeing me stare critically into a mirror one morning after a late night, he offered to pay to have it removed with lasers.
I declined. I didn't tell him that I need it, in some perverse way. A reminder that you can never, for any reason or length of time, no matter how much you love or believe you love, change someone.
That believing you can might end you.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

At the Lamaze class, they had me hold a block of ice for a full minute to stimulate labor pain, saying "Hee-haw, hee-haw," and doing my breathing excercises. They made the husbands try it first. Your father made it through the whole minute. The vision of him shouting "Hee-haw," cross-eyed with pain, was singular. The first really great laugh I've had in weeks.

Although I notice there is never a truly good time to have a nice long chat with one´s mother-in-law, unless you are having an extraordinary life and marriage and your mother-in-law is, say, Maureen Dowd, or Indira Gandhi. Someone of that ilk.

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.

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

My mind floats like ash. I blame myself most cruelly.

What I find about wedding plans is that everyone wants to talk about when I don't. As soon as I do feel like talking about my wedding plans, their eyes glaze over and I can see them wishing they were dead

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

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?

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.

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 was steeped in denial, but my body knew.

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

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.

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

Reuben says in many cultures, the wedding ceremony and all of it's rituals are much the same as a funeral: a transition into another phase of life.
It is like dying and being reborn, if you believe in the afterlife. If you don't believe in an afterlife, then you are toast

Reuben nails my fantasies everytime, with iron rods of reality. He asserts that I am going to die, but probably not for a while, and that maybe I should try getting married and having a life first. He is 70 and knows things, which is why I go to him. But it's sad to leave my romantic illusions at the door of this passage. Although false and destructive and useless, they've been tremendous company.

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.

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.

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.

Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.

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

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.

Today I bought my first issue of Modern Bride Magazine, the November issue. I have it right here. I ordered a year's subscriptioin, using the 1800 number and not the business reply mail card.
Your Dream Dress (It's Here!)
50 Romantic Honeymoons - From Sweet to Sexy
12 Reception Hints You Can't Overlook
6 Real Bridal Makeovers with Expert Tips for You
I discover that holding the magazine makes me anxious. I put it down. I am wondering if there is a way to make me over and, if so, will I be able to be made back.
It strikes me that I am going to have to have a wedding. And it is going to have to be perfect, according to this magazine. There are 12 reception hints I can't overlook. And that's just the tip of the bayonet.
My gut feeling is, My GOD, haven't I done enough?

It seems a very specific bid: I´ll take Famous Authors for five hundred.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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 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.