Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel

“Of course,” I said. I brought the paper up to my face. It felt too light to be a vessel for so much meaning. I wanted to breathe it in, for it to become part of me.

ectopic

Perhaps I was worried that she would be able to read its contents reflected in my face, and they would no longer be mine to own.

I have the phone in my lap. Why does it feel so difficult to dial Claire’s number? Neuronal impulses, muscular contractions. That is all it will take. Nothing complicated. Nothing difficult. Yet it feels so much easier to take up a pen and write about it instead.

Unimagined dreams and unexpected horrors. I was afraid. But, I realized, these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them, I am nothing. Nothing but an animal.

I began to tidy the papers away. I should have trusted him, I thought. All along. I should have believed that he was keeping things from me only because they are too painful to face, fresh, every day. All he was doing was trying to spare me this. This brutal truth. I put the photographs back, the papers, just as I had found them. I felt satisfied.

diaphanous,

Protect me from what, though? From the truth. I thought the truth more important than anything. Maybe I am wrong.

opportunity to practice, to learn how to navigate routes that will not rip through the landscape of my life and send me tumbling somewhere else.