Simple Passion

by Annie Ernaux

We were burning up a capital of desire. What we gained in physical intensity we lost in time.

Also, parents and children are the last people able to accept freely the sexuality of those who are closest to them and so remain forever inaccessible. Children will always refuse to see the truth reflected in their mother’s absent stare and silent behavior: at times they mean nothing to her,

These fleeting moments of detachment were prompted by external factors; I did not wish for them.

My condition was such that not even the sound of his voice could make me happy. It was all infinite emptiness,

The man who returned that evening wasn’t the man I was carrying inside me throughout the year when he was here, and when I was writing about him. I shall never see that man again. Yet it is that surreal, almost non-existent last visit that gives my passion its true meaning, which is precisely to be meaningless, and to have been for two years the most violent and unaccountable reality ever.

Whether or not he was “worth it” is of no consequence. And the fact that all this is gradually slipping away from me, as if it concerned another woman, does not change this one truth: thanks to him, I was able to approach the frontier separating me from others, to the extent of actually believing that I could sometimes cross over it.

I discovered what people are capable of, in other words, anything: sublime or deadly desires, lack of dignity, attitudes and beliefs I had found absurd in others until I myself turned to them. Without knowing it, he brought me closer to the world.