“ I'm trying to figure out precisely which character flaw might be responsible for my latest life failure. ”
My boyfriends have all been as stoical as queen's guards. They'd been patient, committed, and dispassionate, and I'd had to really debase myself to extract any emotion, either grin or grimace, from them.
~ Koren Zailckas
I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.
My demeanor isn't that of a woman enraged. To see me slumped, glassy-eyed, holding a sandwich someone has cut for me into four manageable pieces, a person might tell you I look much more like a woman subdued.
There's a limit to my patience with anything that smacks of metaphysics. I squirm at the mention of mind expansion or warm healing energy. I don't like drum circles, public nudity or strangers touching my feet.