"The Summer Before the Dark" Quotes
A middle-aged woman embarks on a journey of self-discovery and liberation during a summer of change.
fiction | 236 pages | Published in NaN
Quotes
She had never had a life of her own. She had always lived as an adjunct to a man's life.
She had a sense that life itself was a deception, a cheat. That everything she had been taught to take seriously – work, duty, responsibility – was just a trick to get her to accept her life of unreality.
She had thought that the world was full of single women, but perhaps they were all hidden away somewhere, like witches, like the secret behind this cold facade.
She felt that the whole world, even the trees and the sky, were a mockery. That nothing was what it seemed.
She saw herself as a woman who had no emotions, no passions, nothing left but a skeleton, a bony structure, a walking stick.
She was tired of being the one who always gave, always understood, always made allowances.
She wanted life to be simple, like a child's game, but it was always complicated, always demanding.
She had a longing to be free of everything, to be released from all the ties that bound her.
She felt like she was living in a parallel universe, where everything was slightly distorted, slightly off-kilter.
She realized that she had been living a lie, pretending to be someone she wasn't, just to fit into society's expectations.
