I just went through and published the drafts I had saved in this blog over the past three years. This last one is a bunch of quotes from the movie The Country Girl, the source of this blog’s name. It was Grace Kelly’s ugly movie, and everyone knows going ugly will get you the Oscar. I feel like this period of my life has been my own ugly movie–it may not look great on the outside, but I’m going to come out of it a winner and go on to become fucking royalty.

– She wasn’t always like that.

– I know.
They start out as Juliets and wind up as Lady Macbeths.

– When I first met her, she was as fine a person as you’ve ever seen.
She had background and breeding.
She had a nobility about her that made me feel proud to be with her.
I was a good deal older than she was, but it didn’t seem to matter.
She wasn’t a flighty kid.
She had a poise and dignity that was ageless.

Those first few years, I never knew a better life.
A wife who was everything I’d been looking for.
A son who was smart, healthy.
Then our son died.
I came home from the theatre one night a couple of months later.
This kid, I don’t think she ever had a real drink in her life before.
There she is, stretched out across the bed, dead drunk,
her wrists cut and bleeding.
She was jealous that I had my work, something to live for.
She felt she had nothing.

Inside of a year, she was a hopeless drunkard.
In an effort to give her some purpose in life,
I made her feel that I needed her in my work.
I let her pick the songs I should record, the shows I ought to do.
She started taking over everything. She became very possessive.
She wanted to make the decisions, had to be with me all the time.
Whenever I was away, she acted as if I’d run off with another woman.
She had fits of depression.
One time she set fire to a hotel suite.

That’s when I hit the bottle.