"Because I'm moved in writing to be irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, cause there's not enough female irrepressibility written down. I've fused my silence and repression with the entire female gender's silence and repression. I think the sheer fact of women talking, being paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world."
Chris recognizes that she has a great deal of sexuality and emotion bottled up inside. She keeps it hidden because she's ashamed of it, blaming society for expecting women to be something with which she doesn't identify. Although she recognizes the element of repression in her mind, in the act of relieving herself of these hidden thoughts and feelings she continues to delude herself. In the same way that stuffing her feelings down and denying them wasn't sustainable, Chris' desire to feel fulfilled will not be satisfied by Dick or anyone other than Chris.
"Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our own debasement? Why do women always have to come clean?"
Chris feels repressed by her society because her knowledge of herself doesn't match the socially acceptable model for women. She takes this disparity as an opportunity to express anger because obviously she deserves acceptance too. Chris' argument lacks the final step of self-fulfillment which is to recognize that she doesn't need to be accepted by society in order to accept herself.
"It was April the season of blood oranges, emotion running like the stream behind my house upstate, turbulent and thawing. I thought about how fragile people get when they withdraw from anything, how they become bloody yolks protected only by the thinnest shell."
Chris observes the human mind's capacity for addiction. In order to wean oneself from an addiction, that person must subject himself or herself to a severe sadness which comes from the extreme vulnerability of sacrifice. As part of the process of wholeness, the addict must become deliberately vulnerable.
"No matter how dispassionate or large a vision of the world a woman formulates, whenever it includes her own experience and emotion, the telescope's turned back on her. Because emotion's just so terrifying the world refuses to believe that it can be pursued as discipline, as form. Dear Dick, I want to make the world more interesting than my problems. Therefore, I have to make my problems social."
Chris recognizes that she has a problem expressing and accepting her emotions. Her opinion, however, reveals yet another layer of delusion. On some level, Chris believes that her feelings are more important than the exterior world and that she can control how the world behaves. The world has no concern for Chris' feelings, so she must decide to relate to the world differently if she desires to make her emotions of less consequence to herself.
