Dolorous Haze

“I had to be so ugly that the humiliation I brought on myself would humiliate him, too. I would have to strip every last filament of gold from my skin--all the gold I had put there--and strip the gold from his skin, so that none of the gold on him would reflect onto me, and so none of the gold on my would reflect onto him, so we would be in utter darkness together. I curled myself around his legs. I knew he'd never understand why I was doing it--that he was misunderstanding what I meant. But I didn't care if he got me wrong. The way he saw me was not the same thing as me.”
― Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?