Tej’s Reviews > The Memory of Love > Status Update

It was as if this language had found a crack in the emotional defence I had created. It penetrated, and it affected me painfully.

As it is with matters that you leave for later. I had simply become used to it as it was unfinished and neglected. I left it as I had first found it, and stopped caring.
I had not thought I would ever have reason to see it through somebody else's eyes.

Regardless, what had been created in a state of desperation had become permanent. The isolation itself had been a guarantee that nothing would ever rock my existence again. That I would be left in peace in the fragile stability it had taken me so long to establish.

'Was it happy or sad?" he asked.
'Sad,' I said. 'It was very sad.' I looked at him and added: 'At first it was happy though. As happy as anything can ever get.'
'It had to be happy first,' he said, and it sounded like a
private reflection, not a piece of conversation.
I looked at him, but again could not catch his eyes.
"You're probably right. Perhaps nothing can be sad in
itself.'

He looked at me. Or rather, in his usual fashion, he looked not quite at me, but at some point just beyond me. It seemed like a changeable point, with the sole purpose of being close to me but not quite at me.

I had lived in this small desolate place for nearly fifteen years.By myself,mostly.I didn't mind. Absolutely not.It was a self-induced state.But the isolation aggravated the uncertainty,I think, and my life had taken on a slightly surreal quality.For some time I had found myself wishing for a way of corroborating events, memories.I had started to yearn for some kind of confirmation that my memories were still intact.

It was difficult to understand why this suddenly felt so important, when in the past the ability to close the door behind each segment of my life had seemed vital to my survival.

'Marianne,' I said to myself. 'Marianne.'
Lately, I had felt the need to taste the name. To listen to it. Retrieve it, perhaps. It was still a strange experience - I didn't quite own it yet. Or perhaps it was mine but in another, distant time, locked inside another room. I had made it a habit to try it several times every day.