Lust & Wonder: A Memoir

“A novel by Augusten Burroughs.” It said so, right there below the title. It was thrilling for maybe forty-seven seconds, and then the thrill drained right away. As I walked out of the store with my phone now in my pocket, I thought, It doesn’t matter what it is. We get used to it. Which is both good and bad.

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.

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?

Dennis shut down when there was a conflict, and I was the opposite: I had to talk about it. It was unbearable not to. His silence then became this thing I had to break apart with my words. I hated the sound of my own voice when I was like this.

Security and love, these were the two things I did not feel as a child, so I chased after them now, sometimes bumping into things and knocking them down in the process. I was an emotional Great Dane, hugely needy and clumsy.

Now he was the dish of wrapped peppermints next to the cash register that I didn’t want because they were free.

It’s so hard to really trust what’s inside another person, to really believe someone’s intentions and what he or she says. I wished I could just trust him completely, without my own constant doubts regarding his constant doubts.

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

I’m highly sensitive, so I would have sensed—I believed—if I were being incredibly annoying. Which is exactly how annoying people justify being so insufferable.