Chessy

“I followed her, because as I have already said, when I am with my sister I see things from her point of view rather than my own, am compelled to enter her vision, as I used to be compelled to enter her room when we were children, always believing it to be superior to my own. And as we stood out in the street making sure that her car was intact, which of course it was, I became aware of this feeling of having deserted my own life, as once I would desert my room; and I was suddenly filled with the most extraordinary sense of existence as a secret pain, an inner torment it was impossible to share with others, who asked you to attend to them while remaining oblivious to what was inside you, like the mermaid in the fairy story who walks on knives that no one else can see.”
― Rachel Cusk, Outline