But New Love Only Lasts So Long,

Madness Is Not What It Seems. Time Stops. All My Life I've Been Obsessed With Time, Its Motion And Velocity, The Way It Works You Over, The Way It Rushes You Onward, A Pebble Turning In A Brook. I've Always Been Obsessed With Where I'd Go, And What I'd Do, And How I Would Live. I've Always Harbored A Desperate Hope That I Would Make Something Of Myself. Not Then. Time Stopped Seeming So Much Like The Thing That Would Transform Me Into Something Worthwhile And Began To Be Inseparable From Death. I Spent My Time Merely Waiting.

All Of Us Carry Around Countless Bags Of Dusty Old Knickknacks Dated From Childhood: Collected Resentments, Long List Of Wounds Of Greater Or Lesser Significance, Glorified Memories, Absolute Certainties That Later Turn Out To Be Wrong. Humans Are Emotional Pack Rats. These Bags Define Us.

In Her Presence, I Was Reminded Again Of Why I Was An Anoretic: Fear. Of My Needs, For Food, For Sleep, For Touch, For Simple Conversation, For Human Contact, For Love. I Was An Anoretic Because I Was Afraid Of Being Human. Implicit In Human Contact Is The Exposure Of The Self, The Interaction Of The Selves. The Self I'd Had, Once Upon A Time, Was Too Much. Now There Was No Self At All. I Was A Blank.

But In Some Ways, The Most Significant Choices One Makes In Life Are Done For Reasons That Are Not All That Dramatic, Not Earth-shaking At All; Often Enough, The Choices We Make Are, For Better Or For Worse, Made By Default.

We Were At Another Funeral Party. I Wasn’t Sure Who Had Died This Time, But It Was A Suicide, And Upsetting Because It Was Completely Out Of Season. No On Killed Themselves In Summertime. It Was Rude.