the impossibility of choices

One was the assuring kind of love; the other: inciting. On one extreme was ennui; on the other: insanity. The line was drawn clear but a choice eluded her. With any choice, she knew she would get pulled to its extreme. There was no middle ground--perhaps, a small room for death of all beauty and truth, but that did not count, because in the first place the dilemma existed in consequence of having chosen to live so far without the convenience of moral ambiguity. If one had to avoid moral ambiguity, one had to make a choice; one had to leave the middle ground--nay, deny that any middle ground existed at all; one had to be prepared for the possibility of forever languishing in the extremity of a choice. That possibility terrified her; it hung her high on the hook of self-questioning and self-judgement--so high that she feared a fall into absolute nothingness: a numbness and paralysis that she had wanted to avoid all her life. Merely for survival, she began living in denial of both possibilities. "None of this matters. Only the practise of my art" was a denial so convincingly crafted in her mind that she considered it the highest truth, not knowing that its veneer would soon be brutally torn apart with the events to come.

In her boudoir, shapely women chatted about men and love. She smiled and acknowledged their shallow laughter, while within her, an eerie awareness of her own future kept a constant vigil on any happiness or pleasure.