“Humankind cannot bear very much reality”

(I wrote the following article at a very low point in my life, Christmas Eve 2010. Following an operation that went somewhat wrong, I was more seriously ill than I realised with post-operative infections and blood loss. I was also subject to the slowly dawning realisation that certain things I thought to be fixed were in fact illusions. So I wrote this in a fit of crying so unlike me that I never had the courage to share it here, and I wrote a less painful version a week or so later. A few people have read this, but until Monday I thought I would never post this entire article here. It was my birthday and the sight of some trampled daffodils on my walk into work triggered a powerful reaction apparently disproportionate to the visible reality. I was suddenly unable to contain…