"I was no one, I had neither name or face. Moving through August, I was: nothing." —Marguerite Duras, The Easy Life

“To be in favor of solitude is not to be against community or friendship or love. It’s not that being alone is better, just that without the experience of it we block ourselves from discovering something enormously beneficial, perhaps even vital, to selfhood. Who are you when you are not a friend, a partner, a lover, a sibling, a parent, a child? When no one is with you, what do you do, and do you do it differently than if someone was there? It’s hard to see someone fully when another person is always attached to them. More importantly, it’s hard for us to see our own selves if we’re not ever alone.”— Amina Cain, A Horse At Night

During the past fortnight so much happened, so often I was doing something: heading somewhere on a train or in a car, conversing with clients or solicitors or bar patrons, or smiling politely at some gathering, always figuring out what I had to do next. What, on my to-do list, was the most urgent, when everything seemed urgent, and there wasn’t enough Phil to do any of it.

So often I was pulled by the needs and wants of others, my own desire was an unwanted stranger. I wanted to retreat to my bed, to sleep for a long time, for months, to fend off, if temporarily, the attachments other people have and foisted on me. Of course there was no time for reflection, for understanding, or at least processing what was happening. Sometimes I couldn't remember what I had done the previous day. I didn't dream at all; I hadn't in a month. In short, I was turning into an uncanny corpse, an automaton oiled by other people’s demands. What was this thing called Phil?

There were feelings, fugitive and gleaming in the gloom. Sometimes it was joy, as when I glimpsed a friend’s face, or it was trepidation, as when I passed the mother-in-law in a dark hallway. Once, during a cigarette break on the steps of the office, dog lying on the gravel in rare sunshine, I was gripped by a feeling that was akin to anguish.

Where did it come from? I had only sat down. The sadness wanted form; it tried to crystallise into an image—my father? the child I’d never have?—but the image faded, and the sadness softened into melancholy, which itself faded as the phone rang.

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