Nell Frizzell

wanted a man who smelled of woodsmoke, who owned a decent sweater, and who could order a train ticket in advance.

Why was I drawn to people whose age, geographical location, lifestyle, and beliefs made it impossible for me to ever become their girlfriend?

And when you feel unworthy of love—either as a result of rejection, trauma, a tricky childhood, whatever—it is amazing how forensically you can sniff out people who will not love you back.

Sometimes, chasing after people you can’t have is a way of protecting yourself against the vulnerability of a real relationship with the people you can.

the reason I so single-mindedly tried to make incompatible men fall in love with me was because, deep down, I didn’t feel worthy of, or ready for, real commitment.

I was so scared of opening myself up to heartbreak that I found myself drawn toward people who would never let me in far enough to love them.

“I feel weird,” I said, leaning into my friend’s shoulder. “I feel like she doesn’t belong to us anymore.”
She knew what I meant, of course. Both of us had, at different times, lived with Alice, acted out our happiest domestic moments with her, used her as a surrogate for romance, considered her as close as family. And now, she was somebody’s wife, due to be somebody’s mother. In the hierarchy of her heart, there would always be at least two people above us. Some lucky heartbeat, an about-to-be-person living in her womb, was going to have the greatest mother I could imagine. I was jealous of her baby, and jealous that she was having a baby. I was sad that our party had ended but suddenly aware of quite how much I wanted to have what she had. I wanted the total expression of somebody’s love and commitment to take hold in my own body and create something incredible.

Alice’s husband loved her so much that he wanted to bind his actual DNA to hers. He wanted to create a future life, an entire person, within her body. He wanted her to be tied to him, to rely on him, to be his family forever.

Becoming a parent is the only decision that comes with a biological deadline, the only one that cannot be reversed: it is therefore the one decision that throws all others into such sharp focus.

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