Gohlis (and some of the places in my mind I'd rather not be)

What sort of “arrangement” did you think we had? What kind of reality do you want to portray before my eyes? Are you going to paint it by gaslight? I am now sitting in front of and amid your lies. And I cannot be upset about it? It’s not even about your specific “deeds,” but how you have made me question and second-guess myself for months, drowning in doubts and fears, including an oft-confessed horror of ever hurting you. Das ist Verrat!, your old man would say. I’m not given that option.

And now what? Should I let myself pretend or accept it, cool down, and then see it happen once again? What? For about the third or fourth time? Probably more. I can’t guess. I won’t. Why play with a wound? Isn’t that already what I have done my entire life?

Spinoza’s Ethics is now looking me in the eye. What does it say to me? Probably nothing about this. Or if it does, I wouldn’t be able to fathom any lesson at all. I have never read the man, never known the system. But the title is there, prominent, shouting at the corner of my eye.

My chest feels oppressed, and my mind tries to be detached from it. The tightening of my jaw betrays its feeble attempts at concealing it. All I know is that a cold without relief will creep in through my arms and my back, not from my heart, which fools itself finally into some illusion of calm and quiet.

My eyes feel slightly irritated, but that’s just the smell of varnish, fresh on the staircase. I hope the little fool who applied it did so on their way out and not on their way in, getting trapped. They didn’t finish the job, so something must have gone wrong. Or they ran out of varnish.

What will I run out of? Pride? Anger? Patience? Trust? Love?

This, I think, must you tell me.

I know this won’t be your train of thought or line of argument.

I am afraid of my reaction to any attempt to go there.

This, I think, must you not tell me.