Biography of X

by Catherine Lacey

A person can be understood only through the life they choose, the people they choose, the things they do, and not the things that are done to them.*

This is one of the darker, less contested realities of authoritarian governments—that the human animal is a meek thing, easily manipulated. No one wants to admit that they, too, might live quite happily in a simulation, in a simulacrum of life. No one wants to believe that they are, at heart, more interested in comfort than in truth.

“Is life in the small things, in songs or stories, or is it in the large things, in the country, its laws, in the liberty and safety of others? I feel it cannot be in both. I cannot be in both. I am so weary, Phil, I can hardly sleep but I can hardly get out of bed.”

she refused to believe that jet lag was a real thing. It’s the mock suffering performed by those fortunate enough to travel, she always said, so no matter how exhausted I felt after a flight, I soldiered on.

After all, what was time but a series of afternoons, evenings, seasons—something to sprawl over and enjoy, something to possess?

“It gave you a thrill to look at him. Like looking at the American flag.

Life is too short for this! X replied, Oh, but what is it long enough for?

“The happiest years are the shortest. We only notice them after they’re gone,” X wrote in The Reason I’m Lost. “Therefore, the attempt to avoid suffering is the most suicidal impulse of all. It is to ask your life to go by so quickly that you never see a moment of it.”†