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41 " This morning, the sun endures past dawn. I realise that it is August: the summer's last stand. "
― Sara Baume , A Line Made by Walking
42 " This morning, I see the lead in my glass tumbler. A slim, bright glint, a silverfish. I feel it collecting in my blood, papercutting the lining of my veins. "
43 " It's too warm for red wine; now I mix gin and tonics instead. I find they make the ordinary sensation of living lighter, less ruffled. "
44 " I know with unqualified certainty that I want to die. But I also know with equivalent certainty that I won't do anything about it. That I will only remain here and wait for death to indulge me. "
45 " I lie down and think about how this whole long, strange summer ought to end in a substantial event. But, probably, won't. For the first time I acknowledge the possibility that nothing will die, or change, or even happen. "
46 " Everything is very nearly over. And so none of the normal rules of behavior apply. And so none of my actions can have consequences. "
47 " The entrepreneurs are only about my age, probably younger, but they don't seem so. Their tailored clothes and unbending hairdos, their clipboards and laser pointers, make them seem like real grown-up people in a way I have never been. "
48 " The director of the Road Safety Authority comes on the radio to tell me that today is the day of the year upon which more people die in car accidents than on any other, as though if he tells me this I might postpone the car accident I had scheduled; I might remember not to be so common, so vulgar, as to die today. "
49 " But now I remember: I am mentally ill. Properly, officially. And cannot be held responsible for my actions, my words. "
50 " The ability to talk to people: that’s the key to the world. It doesn’t matter whether you are able to articulate your own thoughts and feelings and meanings or not. What matters is being able to make the noises that encourage others to feel comfortable, and the inquiries which present them with the opportunity to articulate their thoughts and feelings and meanings, the particulars of their existences, their passions, preoccupations, beliefs. If you can talk to people in this way, you can go - you can get - anywhere in this world, in life. "
51 " I knew precisely what things I wanted to do—and when and why—and I was deeply resentful of other people's attempts to enforce structure on my days. "
52 " I've always longed to have a patch of personal wilderness. Of waist-high grass entwined with wildflowers through which I can prance; within which I can lie down and disappear from sight. "
53 " The last time I went out at night in the city was almost a year ago. It began with anxiety, then I was pleasantly pissed for a couple of hours, and finally, around the point at which people started taking to the dance floor, I sobered and saddened and the old chant returned: I want to go home. "
54 " At first I wonder if they are brothers; now I remember to wonder if they are robbers or rapists or murderers who've hired suits and photocopied leaflets in a cunning ploy to insinuate themselves into the quiet bungalows of defenceless strangers on hills in middles-of-nowhere, and I realise it would be very stupid to invite them in so they can see for themselves there's no garda here. "
55 " I open my eyes to find the morning adjourned. "
56 " Only the lighted houses remaining, the lemon blush of their inhabited windows. "
57 " I remember the book I was reading. Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector. I remember because there were so many things in Hour of the Star with which I found kinship that I'd brought along a stub of pencil in case I urgently needed to underline. "
58 " I believe: I am less fearful of being alone than I am of not being able to be alone. "
59 " Though I am naturally curious about people, I'm also naturally uneasy when they are right in front of me; when I am right in front of them. "
60 " Why must I test myself? Because no one else will, not anymore. Now that I am no longer a student of any kind, I must take responsibility for the furniture inside my head. I must slide new drawers into chests and attach new rollers to armchairs. I must maintain the old highboys and sideboards and whatnots. Polish, patch, dust, buff. "