My Struggle: Book 5 (My Struggle #5)

by Karl Ove Knausgård

Even then I had felt I was being false, someone who carried thoughts no one else had and which no one must ever know. What emerged from this was myself, this was what was me. In other words, that which in me knew something the others didn’t, that which in me I could never share with anyone else. And the loneliness, which I still felt, was something I had clung to ever since, as it was all I had. So long as I had that no one could harm me, for what they harmed then was something else. No one could take loneliness away from me. The world was a space I moved in, where anything could happen, but in the space I had inside me, which was me, everything was always the same. All my strength lay there. The only person who could find his way in was Dad, and he did, too, when I was dreaming and he seemed to be in my soul and shouting at me. For everyone else I was unreachable. Well, in my thoughts they could reach me, anyone at all could stir them up, but what were thoughts worth? What was consciousness other than the surface of the soul’s ocean? Other than small, brightly colored boats, floating plastic bottles, and driftwood, waves and currents, whatever the day might bring, over a depth of several thousand meters. Or depth was the wrong word. What was consciousness other than the cone of light from a torch in the middle of a dark forest? I closed my eyes and rolled over onto my side. In six or seven hours she would come to me and I longed to feel her body against mine, after holdin...