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death (and therefore to his life). When that moment
arrives, when the time comes when there is no one left in
whom I can provoke a certain degree of shock, no one with
whom to share this blow, then that arduous moment will
have arrived when you must rebuild a life you have no wish
to rebuild, confront the absence, and return to the
landscape of boredom that you never wanted to revisit.
Because . . . No, no . . . I never want to feel the threat of
boredom hovering over me again . . . I’ll choose death
before that.
You have believed this ever since you met him.
Ever since you merged with him, you have thought: If he
isn’t here, I don’t want to be either.
And so?
What are you waiting for?
The two of you talked about it for years. Until your
daughter arrived (because when you have children
together, you can no longer tell the other
I-can’t-live-
without-you
and not scare the hell out of them). For years
you did, in a manner of speaking, promise each other just
that. If not, what exactly does “I can’t live without you”
mean? Is it a lie? Is it a metaphor? What is it exactly?