Cam

“She was a good person and a beautiful woman, but what she was for me was my own creation. I needed her to be perfect and couldn’t allow her to be anything less.
I attributed to her everything I didn’t find in life, but without which I couldn’t live. I even belittled myself to her, so that she should appear greater and I, too, only through her. I gave to her generously, so I might take. Where I was frustrated, she was realised, and this was my compensation. She returned what I’d lost, and I gained more than I thought to gain. My desires had been obscure and disparate, now they were united in a single name, in a single character, more real and more attractive than imagination. I recognised in her everything I was not, yet in rejecting myself I lost nothing. Weak and helpless when faced with people and the world, I gained significance through my creation, which was more valuable than either. Uneasy before the uncertainty of all things, I was sure in the love that was self-creating, for it was need transformed into feeling. Love is both sacrifice and violence; it offers and demands, it begs and scolds. I needed this woman, my entire world, to admire and feel my power over her. I’d created her, as a savage creates his idol, to stand above his cave fire, his defence from thunder, enemies, wild beasts, people, the heavens, and loneliness, from whom he might seek the usual things but also demand the impossible, feel ecstasy, but also bitterness, whom he might both thank and scold, ever aware that, without it, his fears would be unbearable, his hopes without foundation, his joys without permanence.
Solely because of her, even people seemed closer to me.”
― Meša Selimović, The Fortress