Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

butter their mother has left them. I used to think it a heroic gesture, freeing them of a mother who (despite possessing one of the literary gazes that has best captured the euphoria of being alive) could not rid herself of the desperation of a bleak, miserable winter and a love betrayal. This model presides over my thoughts about suicide these days, repetitive, obsessive, serious thoughts. How serious? We’ll never know. There’s always something a little ridiculous about suicidal ideas that aren’t carried out. You know you must make use of the moments when you’re inebriated by pain in order to see it through, but the idea becomes slightly more ridiculous with every day that passes without acting on it. And in the meantime, you talk about it. In an abstract way, of course. “It’s fucking anti-aesthetic,” my friend O. says when I tell her about Plath. “Head in the oven, that’s out of the question.” My friend is an expert in people who want to kill themselves and in people who do kill themselves. She’s a psychiatrist. We met when we were fifteen and were enthralled by our readings of Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Sylvia Plath, and similar writers. •

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