I think the reason I valorised pain for so long is because love has always felt impossible to me. Motes dancing in a sliver of light, easily missed, or remembered only by one.

There's a scene in Engine Summer, where Rush leads Once a Day to a den of foxes. Peeking between leaves, they gaze soft and dreamily.

This moment of transparent affection becomes more and more opaque as the years go by. Love is intermixed with doubt, anticipation is transfigured into hesitation, and the memory of the fox den that once brought Rush joy, brings agony later on.

The moments in your life that you cherished may pass the other by without a thought. What becomes significant to you may be nothing more than a moment in a string of moments for the other.

To love is to be vulnerable to disappointment.

Doubt is at least consistent. It doesn't require an other, only yourself, and the pain that it causes can become gratifying in its own rights.

It can turn on itself, over and again, creating ever greater intensities.

But it's never as gratifying as love.

I don't understand, I told him. I have understood nothing, and now I have nothing left. I overthrew my deepest wisdom for her sake, made myself a clear pool for her reflection. And now there's only empty sky.