If the other does x, I shall do y; if the other withholds x, I shall retreat into z. My peculiar attempt at negotiating with uncertainty, an exercise in pre-emptive grief disguised as discernment. I might surely mistake the legibility of a pattern for the certainty of an outcome
As a grown man I no longer have ‘nightmares’, where I’m scared by something, but rather ‘sadmares’, which cause me to wake up filled with an incredible and inexorable sense of melancholy and loss