Diary #2

PALO ALTO, 1999 — Sleeping with Mark in his Palo Alto apartment. This is my proof. He did love me once.

THE HAGUE, 2012 — Seeing this photo with my ex husband does not make me angry. Strangely, it doesn’t make me sad. It sort of makes me happy. That even if it is in the past, that there once was love and warmth and sharing and comfort and connection. We never really fought, we just drifted further and further apart. Our marriage didn’t so much disintegrate as it did simply dissolve into an imperceptible faintness.

In life everything is taken away eventually. Maybe by something horrific like Alzheimer’s or a stroke, maybe not by anything so dramatic, yet taken away nonetheless. Everything we have is transitory. At least from the perspective of Western ego. Perhaps if you can be more Zen about it, it is the gentleness of the continuum rather than the heat of any given moment. This is a bittersweet photograph, yet one that is pleasing in its way.