Big Swiss

Yes, people age horribly. They suffer strokes. Their bodies and brains fall apart. But the male ego? Firmly intact until the bitter end.

I spent a lot of time alone, but I was rarely lonely because I like my own brain.

It was a voice you could snag your sweater on, or perhaps chip one of your teeth, but it was also sweet enough to suck on, to sleep with in your mouth.

She had trouble being in her body in general, which was why she liked to be roughed up by the elements and was always either sunburned, windblown, or damp from the rain.

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,

It's incredible to me that you're still getting mileage out of your mother's suicide. You're still using it as currency, even though it has nothing to do with what you did. In fact, It's kind of psychotic that you're spending that currency on this moment. When will it run out?

I’m direct,” Big Swiss admitted, “because I don’t care if people like me. I distrust people-pleasers. They seem phony to me, and dangerous.

Why not say that you made a choice, that you knew what you were doing was wrong, and that you did it anyway? Why continue coasting on your trauma? It's not a good look at your age.

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 stopped doing that for two seconds and got over themselves, even a little, they might actually become who they were meant to be.

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 lazy simmer later, an extremely rich red-flag stew that she forked into her mouth every day like a fucking moron, sometimes for years on end.

She reminded Greta of one of those exotic vegetables she was drawn to at the farmer's market but didn't know how to cook. Kohlrabi, maybe, or a Jerusalem artichoke. Not very approachable. Not sweet or overly familiar. Not easily boiled down or buttered up.

Sorry is just something you take off a shelf. It means nothing to me.

It takes an enormous amount of energy—and courage—to free yourself, to follow the path of transformation without abandoning yourself, without fleeing from your pain and all the loss you’ve experienced.

Yes. I spent a lot of time alone, but I was rarely lonely because I like my own brain.

We're not dating. Don't be disgusting,” Big Swiss said, "I love you.

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.

Desire,” Greta said. “You may not understand this, but I haven’t felt real desire in years.” “What else are you feeling?” “I’m feeling pretty gay, to be honest,” Greta said.

If everything can be explained by your trauma, then nothing is really your fault, right? You always have this convenient out. Your mother killed herself, and so that gives you permission to do whatever you want?

When I pick out pastries at the bakery, it sounds like I’m ordering someone’s execution.

She recalled her favorite part about being single, about being alive, the only thing for which she experienced pure and complete gratitude as well as the existence of God and heaven, her greatest, most unfiltered joy: sleeping alone, waking up alone, not speaking before noon.

the shrink diagnosed her with emotional detachment disorder, which seemed like a stretch to Greta, who preferred to think of it as “poise” on a bad day, “grace” on a good one, and, when she was feeling full of herself, “serenity.

It was late spring and everything was fragrant and in bloom: the dogwood trees, the dogs themselves, their owners. Big Swiss was a showy white flower in puffed sleeves and linen shorts. Greta, who’d peaked weeks ago, was already wilting and losing her petals.

Her beauty was like Switzerland itself—stunning, but sterile—and her Teutonic stoicism made the people around her seem like emotional libertines or, to use a more psychiatric term, total fucking basket cases.

Sometimes I feel like we're getting somewhere," Greta said. "Other times I wonder if I'm just not that kind of person." "Which kind?" "The kind who gets to the bottom of things.

The straitjacket explained her passivity, her inability to defend herself, to take action, to make plans, to dream—

She’d been a listener all her life and tended to surround herself with people in love with their own voices.

Well, our relationship felt like living,’ Greta said. ‘To me, anyways. I have never been more myself with anyone, including myself.’ ‘You’re not yourself with yourself?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘But it’s hard to be with someone who simply drifts, who never searches for meaning, who just coasts along, and then wonders why she’s so powerless-’ ‘Suicidal,’ Greta said, correcting her. ‘You’re telling me you want to die when my husband was almost stabbed to death by the same man who tried to kill me. Who’s the narcissist now?’ ‘Me, I guess. Me, me, me.

My point is, we all have an inner shithead, and maybe you need to shake hands with yours.

as a sex and love addict whose drug of choice was “fantasy and intrigue.