The Hunting Party

Some people, given just the right amount of pressure, taken out of their usual, comfortable environments, don’t need much encouragement at all to become monsters. And sometimes you just get a strong sense about people, and you can’t explain it; you simply know it, in some deeper part of yourself.

But it is a lot easier to face the day when you know you won't have to face other people and their happiness.

Sometimes solitude is the only way to regain your sanity.

I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves

Remove all of the distractions, and here, in the silence and the solitude, the demons they have kept at bay catch up with them.

Here is a person held together by tape and glue and prescription-strength sleeping pills – the only thing I can be persuaded to make a foray into civilisation for, these days.

It is a dark place form which you can never quite return. It does something to you, the first time. An essential change somewhere deep in the soul, the amputation of something important. The first time is the worst, but with each death the soul is wounded further. After a while there is nothing left but scar tissue.

But that’s the thing about old friends, isn’t it? Sometimes they don’t even realize that they no longer have anything in common. That maybe they don’t even like each other anymore.

Perhaps it's simply growing older. A sense that she doesn't have to prove herself any longer, that she knows exactly who she is. I envy that.

There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it.

And being around people - people carrying on with their lives, busy and messy, settling down, having children, getting married - just emphasizes how much my own has stalled, indefinitely. Perhaps forever.

Sometimes these impulses overtake me -- the urge to push things a bit further... even the urge to wound. I can't stop myself, it's like a compulsion.

Wounds inflicted at that sort of raw, unformed time in our lives tend to cut the deepest - and leave the worst scars.

a friend she can be bad enough. The thought of having her as an enemy is frankly terrifying.

But here the cold has a chance to get you properly in its grip.

The scales, as they say, have fallen from my eyes.

Besides, there can’t be any real harm in not saying anything. Can there?

And the ones like me, the mousy nobodies, we don’t always turn out to be the heroes of the tale. Sometimes we have our own dark secrets.

Feridas infligidas (...) em épocas ainda virgens das nossas vidas tendem a ser bem profundas - e deixam as piores cicatrizes.

And then I'll segue neatly into my whole routine- about how, when you think about it, in the times we live in we are all stalkers. All of us knowing so much about one another's lives. Even people we haven't seen in years. Old childhood friends, old schoolmates. I'll talk about how we all submit to being stalked. How we think that we're in control, sharing what we think we choose to share, but really putting a lot more out there than we're aware of.

It’s tricky – as anyone who has been in this situation will know – to be the latest addition to a group of old friends.

And I feel the question expired on my lips.

I had always felt, ever since Jamie and I got together, that it was too good, that we were too lucky. That happiness like this couldn't possibly last: we were using up more than our allotted quota of the stuff, and at some point someone had to notice.

There is nothing here to tell you about the man who inhabits the room, unless the nothing is in itself a clue to something. It has the anonymity of a prison cell.

I’m not saying that I have a drinking problem; I don’t. But I don’t ever drink for pleasure. I do it out of necessity. I use it as another painkiller: to blunt the edge of things, to alleviate the chronic, aching torment of memory.

Jamie believed that people are basically civilized animals. That the essential urges are hidden beneath a layer of social gloss; stifled, controlled.

as pessoas são basicamente animais civilizados. Que os instintos básicos ficam escondidos sob uma camada de verniz social; sufocados, controlados. Mas que, em momentos de estresse, mesmo não tão grandes, nosso animal interior tem a chance de irromper.

They seemed almost at times like actors, I thought, making a great show of what a wonderful time they were having. They laughed a little too hard. They drank a great deal too much. And at the same time, despite all this evidence of merriment, they seemed to watch each other. Perhaps it’s hindsight, making this impression seem like more than it was. I suppose there are probably tensions in most groups of friends. But I was struck by the thought that they did not seem completely comfortable in one another’s company. Which was odd, as they’d told me right at the beginning that they were very old friends. But that’s the thing about old friends, isn’t it? Sometimes they don’t even realise that they no longer have anything in common. That maybe they don’t even like each other any more.

even if you don’t have much interaction with other human beings – as I do not – it turns out that the instinct to judge one another, that basic human trait, does not leave us.

I’ve planned this trip, so I feel a certain ownership of it – the anxiety that people won’t enjoy themselves, that things might go wrong. And also a sense of pride, already, in its small successes … like this, the wild beauty outside the window.