Trafika Europe 2 - Polish Nocturne

You wait and wait; you begin to suspect that you might not be the Isolde you thought you were destined to become, but the only thing you achieve is a mild case of anemia and an enviable figure because you’re not hungry and don’t eat. You start to tire of waiting and you think maybe you should help the situation a bit. It’s not enough to eat little; on the contrary, in a time when everything edible is toxic to a lesser or greater degree, nothing improves health more than not eating. You need to do more to move things along. But how? A colleague sends me an e-mail:“What helped me was to go to Iraq when things were so messed up there.” Something to consider. I make a mental note in my planner for killing time: Become a war correspondent. Then, of course, there’s my daughter. She’s both a deterrent against my wish to disappear and a force driving me toward it: I’m haunted by the fear of offering her a sad life. Because, this I know for sure: better a dead mom than a sad, toxic mom. (But, maybe you won’t be the sad mother you think you’ll be?)

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The truth is, the greater part of your day is taken up with graphic, visual, plastic, full-color fantasies of killing yourself. You are not convinced by the model that comes to mind, the suicide prototype from your adolescence: the image of Sylvia Plath with her head in the oven, her two lovely children in the next room snacking on the bread and

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