Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti

 

"By the end, people around you will be dying off, and they will be thinking about their own deaths and the deaths of their partners so entirely that they won't have time to notice what you have accomplished, or how you managed to live such a faultless life, they're just going to be thinking about how their wife is dying, or how their husband has died, or about how there's nobody in the world who will love them as much or understand them so well, while you will be sitting here all alone with your great pride over the life you have crafted, and the work you have made, and everything you did to make yourself so perfect and good. By which I mean, not having children, being with the wrong man, having no love in the end, and being sort of penniless and maybe ignored."