Until then, I’d seen my life as a finished work—not finished to my satisfaction, perhaps, but without anything major on the horizon. I’d spent the year before carefully preparing myself for death. And although my clinical death didn’t come after all, the spiritual death that came in its place never really left, though I don’t like to say so, and will perhaps be hanging around until my clinical death, though I don’t like to say that either. But the possibility of change meant the possibility of life, and I had to be very brave, and to do that I had to be very desperate, since I thought I no longer had the energy for any kind of change at all. Making those particular changes seemed quite impossible, and it took real courage to embark on them. I needed all my reserves of psychological energy, as well as rigorous self-discipline and a steely resistance to fear. I couldn’t let myself be afraid, any more than I could let myself look over my shoulder at the things I was leaving behind.

Exercises

November 30