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I am a forty-three-year-old woman, a mother, healthy, reasonable-looking; I am in my own city; I am able to make a living; I am sometimes sad or frightened, and recently I have been hurt; but I am also learning to examine myself and my crimes less defensively; the Mighty Force has not lately come t…

The gist of it is, I guess, that I wasn’t vulnerable, or feminine. F says that I didn’t need him enough, that I barged straight through him. I have to accept this in silence. Because it is true.

I told the Jungian how I hated and feared the kind of privilege claimed by beautiful women.

‘And how have you claimed attention, Helen?’

I did not like being asked this question.

‘Sex. Using my brains.’

A poem translated from the Arabic called Homesickness. Words to the effect of ‘Once again you take out your knife and stab me’, and then this: ‘Nobody knows whether I am dancing or staggering.’

‘There is something between me and her.’

‘Since when?’

‘Two weeks.’

I keep walking but…

In the discussion I ran the line against possessiveness that we thought was so cool in the seventies: ‘Jealousy is a completely useless emotion.’

Psychoanalyst: ‘On the contrary. I think jealousy is at the cutting edge of the psyche.’

Me: (riveted) ‘What do you mean?’

Psychoanalyst: ‘It’s …