1/06/2023 11:18 am

"What I was feeling, anyway—it wasn’t nearly interesting enough to be true and tragic unhappiness. It felt neither romantic nor dramatic nor poetic, but rather grinding and unpleasant, like a sore throat. (...) I wanted to be tragic in order to justify simply being unhappy, but knowing that I wanted to be tragic made me suspect the very legitimacy of that unhappiness."

"If someone in authority, however, someone who had the power to grant such things, might allow my unhappiness, then it would at last bear the stamp of legitimacy, and I would be free to believe in it."

Skin Game, by Caroline Kettlewell