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B3: What We Talk about When We Talk about Killing
Ourselves
ime has been returned to me without my asking for
it. Absolute Love is hard work; it absorbs a lot of
time, a lot of energy. I had mirrored my time to his.
My schedules to his. My age to his. And I was all too happy
to do so. Ever since I was little I’ve been afraid of having too
much time on my hands, but this has never happened in
the last sixteen years. Because I added his activities to mine:
Even if I wasn’t the protagonist of his, even though he was
living them and not me, I was there; I was always there. If
someone were to ask me what I was doing, where I was, for
instance, on the day the World Trade Center collapsed, I
couldn’t tell you for sure. But ask me where he was, and I
know exactly where and with whom. When we were apart
for a few hours, my mind always accompanied him. And
when we were together, his inner climate—his every smile,
his every sign of irritation, his every new dish, his every
emotion—regulated my mood. In a word, to be left
suddenly without an occupation of this import clearly
transforms the time that lies ahead into an interminable
desert.
So much for time. As for space: on arriving in town after
being gone since Friday, I experience an unsettling feeling.
Have you ever had the impression that everything around
you is a set, a fake landscape, a stage identical to the
familiar one, yet absolutely strange and never seen before?
T