I stayed a night with friends at Mona Vale. V wouldn’t come. Ashamed to be sleepless, to be in this much pain. And yet this is life. The toughness of life. People’s utter, bottomless selfishness. This is what people do. The fact that I’ve been faithful to V for ten years has no weight, in the big scales of what will become of us. No ‘virtue’, no ‘self-control’ can save us, or protect us from each other. We can’t make room for each other. We push each other into the most extreme versions of ourselves, and then with a gritty determination we fight.