Lust & Wonder: A Memoir

How many of the things I fear or dread are actually things that I want?

The horrible thing about being sober is you lose your excuse for being so fucked up.

Perhaps we’d been not in a relationship together, after all, so much as crouching together in the same hiding space, a true limited liability partnership.

If I was going to be completely sober for the rest of my life, if I couldn’t even have one drink at the end of a long and brittle day, then the life I lived needed to be a life from which I did not seek escape.

know now: what is is all that matters. Not the thing you know is meant to be, not what could be, not what should be, not what ought to be, not what once was. Only the is.

I had overlooked the most important thing: he wasn’t right for me. I wasn’t right for him. Merely wanting us to be right and good together wasn’t enough.

These were exactly the sorts of things that I used to run away from by drinking. Ordinary tasks have always overwhelmed me.

It was a relief to be sober. It was also a burden and a great unfairness.

And didn’t this mean, wasn’t it possible, I might have another chance? To find somebody I wouldn’t have to change for, somebody who wasn’t bothered so much by the many troublesome things about me or maybe even liked them?