But what kind of mind did I need, and not have, for this?

I could have cried out with the frustration, for it seemed that in me was a fog that smothered me whenever I approached the door that might lead to freedom. I knew the door was there, I could almost feel it, heavy and wooden, far inside the tunnels of my skull. I could not get to it, and I struggled, but always when the door was still some twists away, the fog would melt around me and what energy I had would die in triviality. I could get hold of nothing.

“All right,” I would think firmly. “I’ve got to get to the bottom of this. This can’t go on.” And I would make a coffee and light a cigarette and try to think. “The problem,” I would say to myself, “is that I lack initiative. I can’t seem to act on my own. Now, what is it that will give me the ability to be something on my own?” For the first premise had now to be that, for a large portion of my time I was, in fact, on my own.

And thinking of that, I would remember the children, and thinking of them, I would worry. I watched the clock, waiting for them to come home from school, afraid for them. My day, my own day, was over when I caught sight of them, everything geared to that moment when I’d see them coming up the street, turning up our walk, climbing the little rise to our house, submitting themselves to my hugs and my help, and then, more often now, going back out again to play with their friends, leaving me alone again, waiting for them to come back, worrying and counting then the moments until Stephen came.

I heard myself saying things I never had before. Dredging Stephen for details of his days at work, just as I did with the children. Piling onto him the details of my day, boring, I could hear myself talking, knowing I must be boring him, filling the spaces, trying to make him fill mine.