Mourning Diary

What separates me from maman (from the mourning that was my identification with her) is the density (enlarging, gradually accumulating) of the time when, since her death, I have been able to live without her

We don’t forget,

but something vacant settles in us.

I would not want a “monument” for myself alone.

Actually the common feature of my depressions, of the moments when I am down (trips, social situations, certain aspects of Urt, crypto-amorous requirements), would be this: that I cannot bear what—even by relay—I might take for a substitute for maman.

And where it proceeds least badly is when I’m in a situation where there is a sort of extension of my life with her (the apartment).

I ask for nothing but to live in my suffering.

I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.

Impossibility—indignity, actually—of entrusting to a drug—on the pretext of depression—my suffering, as if it were a disease, a “possession”—an alienation (something that makes you alien)—whereas it’s an essential, an intimate part of yourself . . .

how barbarous not to believe in souls—in the immortality of souls! the idiotic truth of materialism!

! Do you really believe there’s a chance of meeting? If I were sure of meeting Maman again, I’d die right away.”

In a sense, therefore, it is as if I had to make maman recognized. This is the theme of the “monument”; but:

For me, the Monument is not lasting, not eternal (my doctrine is too profoundly Everything passes: tombs die too), it is an act, an action, an activity that brings recognition.