Megan Nolan

The female narrator falls completely into the power of a male writer. When he suddenly rejects her, she resolves to hang on to him and his love at all costs...even if it destroys her.

Acts of Desperation

raia – inactive

I could not be alone happily, and because I knew this was a sign of weakness, I forced myself to endure it for as long as I could before breaking, although I sometimes thought I would go mad.

Being with other people was, to me, the feeling of being realised.

It was the feeling that misfortune, no matter how great, would eventually serve to lead each of us to our own particular and inevitable conclusion.

I love myself in love. I find my feelings fascinating and human, for once can sympathise with my own actions.

The act of unwanted sex was not what angered me most, but rather the tedious reminder that men can often do whatever they want and that some of them will.

I knew it was childish, behaving this way, but it was painful to be reminded so casually that everything I cared about was subject to the whims of others.

And so in moments like this one when I was unexpectedly confronted by my own need, my reaction was to deny – to hysterically deny – that it existed. 

How impoverished my internal life had become, the scrabbling for a token of love from somebody who didn’t want to offer it.

The loss of someone you love can make you go mad in the best of circumstances. I did not just love Ciaran but loved him darkly, wrongly. Losing someone you love in those ways can turn you not only mad but wicked too.

Was I feeling something true from within myself, or was I living out a fantasy I had assembled?

The pain was still going on, but it was no longer happening to me, it was happening to a statue.

Acts of Desperation quotes

Join the club