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?)

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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