I was dealing with a new sense of erasure a feeling that all the promise and vividness of my youth, all its loudness, was being rubbed out.Īfter Andy read The Bride Stripped Bare, he started noticing me again. Where I'd sometimes end up crying over the dishes in the sink for no other reason than that I was exhausted. I'd been disappearing into the strange new land of the homemaker, where I often forgot to eat because I was so busy tending to the needs of everyone else. For, as a freshly married wife in her mid-thirties, with a toddler and a baby, I'd suddenly lost control of my world, the migraine-free world of a single career girl who'd always called the shots: what she ate, how much sleep she got, where she spent holidays, what sheets she put on the bed. When I was writing I felt calm - but didn't anywhere else in my life. At my desk I'd entered this strange, liberating psychological state of secrecy: as if I was stepping out of my everyday self and becoming someone much more confident. It was like a rampant weed affecting every facet of my life, even the most cherished.Īnd yet writing The Bride Stripped Bare had been all about control. Stress had driven me to a place I'd never been to before. I rushed him into my arms and held and held him, and wept too: for what I'd done, and for the woman I'd become. Couldn't sleep couldn't shut my brain down at night desperately tired and thinking maybe all that was needed was Valium, but scared of the slippery slope it could lead me down. I was dreading the reaction from friends and family most of all from Andy, my husband. They showed me kindnesses that cracked my heart and yet I couldn't tell them I was crying because I'd written a sexually explicit, excruciatingly honest book, and felt like I was falling apart. Strangers asked if I'd like to sit down, ring someone, have a glass of water. I was unable to walk into the restaurant, unable to face it. 'No, I'm fine,' I insisted.įor half an hour I wandered the streets of Soho wracked by huge, gulping sobs. The driver kept on turning around in alarm and asking if he should take me home. But on the way I started weeping uncontrollably as if I was grieving. Okay, I said, I'll treat myself: dressed to the nines, I got a minicab to the restaurant. The day Bride was released my publishers insisted on a celebratory lunch. When we can't control what we think we have a right to, we get stressed. We have more choice, more knowledge and louder voices.

New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENTĪnd, yet, in this modern world, we expect to be in control of so much of our lives - from the time our new sofa is delivered to the way our latte is made at Starbucks, to what school our children get into.

The bride stripped bare by anonymous