The Passion According to G.H.

by Clarice Lispector

I lost something that was essential to me, and that no longer is. I no longer need it, as if I’d lost a third leg that up till then made it impossible for me to walk but that turned me into a stable tripod. I lost that third leg. And I went back to being a person I never was. I went back to having something I never had: just two legs. I know I can only walk with two legs. But I feel the useless absence of that third leg and it scares me, it was the leg that made me something findable by myself, and without even having to look for myself.

Why don’t I have the courage just to discover a way in? Oh, I know I went in, oh yes. But I got scared because I don’t know what that entrance opens onto. And I’d never let myself be carried off, unless I knew where to.

How can I explain that my greatest fear is living whatever comes? how to explain that I can’t stand seeing, just because life isn’t what I thought but something else — as if I knew what! Why is seeing such disorganization?

I need courage to venture making something concrete out of my feeling. It’s like having a coin and not knowing in which country it is legal tender.

For now the first timid pleasure I am having is realizing I lost my fear of ugliness. And that loss is such goodness. It is a sweetness.

Listen, faced with the living cockroach, the worst discovery was that the world is not human, and that we are not human.

Dehumanization is as painful as losing everything, as losing everything, my love. I was opening and closing my mouth

to ask for help but I couldn’t and didn’t know how to articulate it.