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Late this afternoon X the painter called me on the phone. She was in bed with flu. First thing she said was, very politely, ‘I don’t know why you think we can help each other.’ An hour of conversation followed, a quiet comparing of notes, during which many long pauses fell. Pauses of thought. Of st…

The Polish philosopher, on the phone: ‘Let’s say you decided to leave V. What would be holding you back?’

Long pause. I walk through our life, as it were room by room. It is very bare.

‘In my heart I know I have to leave. But I’m hanging on. Because I’ve got this terrible need for him to tell…

I don’t know what she would make of this but here’s what I think happened: I wanted so much to be loved that I tried to turn myself into the sort of woman I thought I would have to be, in order to be lovable. In the process I falsified myself, lost part of my soul, made myself sick with swallowed r…

On the couch. Why do I find it so hard to be happy? She suggests that pain is more familiar to me, that I gravitate towards it. We talk about the ‘desert’ in me, how V had reached it, no longer found what he wanted and needed, and turned away to another woman: how this was my part in what happened;…

I don’t know what she would make of this but here’s what I think happened: I wanted so much to be loved that I tried to turn myself into the sort of woman I thought I would have to be, in order to be lovable. In the process I falsified myself, lost part of my soul, made myself sick with swallowed r…