—TAKE ME TO THE PILOT OF YOUR SOUL

 

 

GETTING LOST   /   Annie Ernaux, part 2

 

 

Love and writing are the only two things in the world that I can bear, the rest is darkness.

 

But if I didn’t have all these fears, it would mean I was indifferent.

 

I understand people not wanting to go on living, sometimes.

 

The best proof of this is that I am writing about it here. Knowing is a great strength and also a form of pleasure.

 

I get lost, my self dissolves.

 

Passion fills life to bursting.

 

Only beginnings are truly beautiful.

 

And then comes the time when the pain is so all-consuming that moments of happiness are nothing more than future pain.

 

Each time, it’s as if I’m going to lose my virginity all over again.

 

And it occurs to me that he loves me a little, in his own way.

 

“I’ll try,” that awful phrase for when you don’t feel like doing something.

 

The proof always lies in jealousy.

 

It has to remain a dream, a sorrow.

 

To state the obvious, objectively, when you go to bed with someone, the things you do are the same, whether or not you’re in love.

 

I know I might as well be writing to a wall.

 

It’s always the same insane panic.

 

So, where does guilt come from, a life too empty, lacking in desire? Which is truer, desire or guilt?

 

Well, anyway, I love him with all my emptiness.

 

Dear God, it takes so long to learn the other’s body, and how to give it pleasure. Lesbians choose the path of least resistance.

 

And yet, there’s always the same anxiety that he won’t come—or, for that matter, that he will.

 

What does a pimple or scar matter? Not seeing means passion.

 

I think of nothing, submerged in flesh and sweetness.

 

There is a notebook full of sorrow, with a few glimmers of wild delight.

 

How am I to live this way, to survive after what seems to me an inescapable breakup, or rather a logical ending to this story that was so beautiful, so perfect at the start?