““Why did I do it?" I finally asked him. "Because you couldn't stand it, because you were choking, that's why. Perfectly understandable." No, it was not understandable. Choking was just a word, a metaphor, a nothing. I myself had found the world crawling under my pillow that very same night. It was not an answer, not an explanation, yet it seemed the only one at hand, and the only word that said everything despite my mistrust of words. Why had I left her? Because I was living someone else's life, not mine. Because I wanted my life back, even if I didn't know what my life was or what I even wanted it to be. Because I wanted to be alone, or not with her, or with someone else, or, better yet, with no one at all. Because I wanted to find something of me in others only to realize that others were never going to be like me and ultimately had to be unclasped. thrown out, exploded, because estrangement is branded on the soul, because love itself was foreign to me, and in its place sat resentment and bile. Why had I even started with her? To be with someone instead of no one? To be like him? Or was I already, had always been like him, but in so different a guise that it was just as easy to think us poles apart? The Arab and the jew, the ill-tempered and the mild-mannered, the irascible and the forbearing, the this and the that! And yet, we came from the same mold, choked in the same way, and in the same way, lashed back, then ran away.””
