I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mother, with my mother's death, with losing my mother and not being able to get her back. All that blind, infantile hunger to save and be saved, to repeat the past and make it different, had somehow attached itself, ravenously, to her. There was an instability in it, a sickness. I was seeing things that weren't there. I was only one step away from some trailer park loner stalking a girl he'd spotted in the mall. For the truth of it was: Pippa and I saw each other maybe twice a year; we e-mailed and texted, though with no great regularity; when she was in town we loaned each other books and went to the movies; we were friends; nothing more. My hopes for a relationship with her were wholly unreal, whereas my ongoing misery, and frustration, were an all-too-horrible reality. Was groundless, hopeless, unrequited obsession any way to waste the rest of my life? .Donna Tartt
About This Quote
In the quote above, the author is talking about her irrational ideas. She was deluded about her love for a girl she only saw a couple times a year. She was unable to let go of those unhealthy ideas and become a happier person because she was unable to move on from her past relationships. The quote also shows that she was unhappy with not being able to have a relationship with Pippa because she was unable to move forward from her past relationships. In this quote, the author tries to justify his frustration but does not realize that he has been wasting his time with Pippa.
Source: The Goldfinch
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