It is not that I cannot play the piano - that prevents my playing it. It has to do with doing something for the right reasons, without deluding yourself, even if this is also out of respect for everyone else, and therefore not deluding them either, or giving them false hopes. I know that it is a path it would be pointless to go down now; the mere fact it was not always pointless, and that the path remains open, and that I am conscious of both these things, is not in itself an argument against this decision; it is, when properly considered, little more than an incidental observation.

When I leave, she never awaits us – if that makes sense. Without impelling me onward, even toward my own happiness, neither does she try to call any part of me back. Instead, she seems to await something else, as if my going away only opened the way for a different form of departure, I tell myself - as if we were not really the things either of us believed ourselves to be, but instead only the means to reach ourselves.