I felt suddenly shy. I was not used to shy. I was used to shame. Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you t… - Jonathan Safran Foer

Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.

When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.

I got tired, I told him. Not worn out, but worn through. Like one of those wives who wakes up one morning and says I can't bake any more bread.
You never bake bread, he wrote, and we were still joking.
Then it's like I woke up and baked bread, I said, and we were joking even then. I wondered will there come a time when we won't be joking? And what would it look like? And how would that feel?
When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calender that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from the chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.
I spent my life learning to feel less.
Every day I felt less.
Is that growing old? Or is it something worse?
You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want. Shame is when you turn your head away from something you do not want.