Is this egomania? Doesn’t everyone suffer? Yes, my love, and that only makes it worse. You’re going to say there is no reason to be afraid of death. That it’s a part of life and that it comes to everybody and that fatal diagnosis is a kind of a gift: an opportunity to understand the most consequential moment of our life—its final moment, and how we meet it, what prey we will bring it in our teeth and lay at its doorstep. Isn’t that what we are seeking in our urge to feel alive? To bite into the root, to feel every movement of the cosmos? But what my heart feels is beyond the reach of logic. And it’s petrified. Although, what can a mere muscle know of life? A self-replicating system, a carbon-based organism, that grows aware of its place in the arse of the universe and is afraid to get out of bed in the morning. It needs its daily dose of pain relief. This certainty we hastily try to drown with the news, work, church bells, drugs—these are all our relief from pain. Love too. And dreams. That may be the strongest painkiller of all.

That’s why my short-sighted subconscious keeps pushing me to you. It’s tempting me with images of a blissful future, as though that could yet come to pass. As though we could still be together.

I’m sorry, Mari. I regret that when I was by your side, I was unable to show you just how important you truly are. I regret that I lacked the courage to share my weakness. I regret that I was unable to comprehend the bitterness of the loss we experience whenever we exchange our lives for those of another, surrendering ourselves to the dirty hands of strangers. Forgive me for making you feel superfluous. I am here, standing before you, exposed and weak. I am nothing special. I am nothing. Nobody will know I was ever here. My whole life, I’ve never been able to create anything truly important, something real that would live beyond me. You’re luckier. You have a child and a family to take care of. You will remain alive at least somehow.

Perhaps if my ruminations were of any importance to anybody, it might serve as justification for my existence and help me conquer my fears. For this I am eternally grateful to you. The words gushing out of this river inside me are meaningless without you. They are yours. They are my only source of the strength I need to resist.

Don’t forgive me, only understand. I don’t have much time left, but I want you to remember: together we don’t have time at all. So with or without me, go all the way. Drain your cups, scale the highest mountains, and don’t stop until you reach the summit. Never let go. Fight, cast yourself against the rocks, beach yourself on the shore of reality, Mari, or the poison needles of my nightmares will infect you and you will be pulled with me beyond the looking glass.