Having more or less exorcised the fuckeries of my formative years, I'm in a weird stage of not having that emotional foil (even if I’m the only one of the two of us who knew she was a foil) not knowing what to do without one – like mother, like son, apparently: when her mother died, she made K into her sworn enemy; after she died, I made an attempt to turn K's dad into mine (he did and has made it all too easy) and, while I think I've managed to stop it – though those patterns do, indeed, run deep – or at least put a hard pause on it, I'm nonetheless making efforts at increased vigiliance over myself: "he keeps watch and guard on himself as his own enemy, lying in wait for him," as Epictetus says; we are, all, our own worst enemy.

Something of the start of a midlife crisis, perhaps, or at least a defining reorientation of things. Having well and truly fucked things up during my quarter-life iteration (and baring the scars of being at the center of both of my parents’), I'm operating with one primary rule: no drastic changes until I’m as certain as I can be that I’ve ridden the wave to shore or wherever it throws me off.