This is the sign of progress: I am reading and enjoying the Goldberg book. As I have said before: people keep insisting reading is a way to avoid writing; you cannot, however, write without it.
It is a sign of progress because in my worst period I could not read. I would think: this resembles what I should be writing AND ALSO writing such things is what I should not be doing. And I could not concentrate, as the double exhortation was all too painful.
Later, for years, it was hard to read because I was overcome by sadness. I would think: this resembles what I should be able to do, and what I should have been doing, and I still do not have the strength to do it. This direct look at how destroyed I was, was in itself weakening; I was afraid of the waves of sadness because they were so disabling; trying to read was risky for one’s functional day therefore. Being aware of this, managing this, meant looking yet again at the razed territory. I knew it was there and why it was there, and what it looked like. It did not seem right to look again and I wanted a way around or across.
Now I can read with attention. I think: this is good, it is my patrie, it resembles what I would like to do, it is the thing I understand doing. That is a very different feeling, although I still become nostalgic for myself before destruction and also all the time in which I was deserted, time that will not come back. I will like things still better when I no longer remember.
Meanwhile, this is Cándida.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Really sad. Real loss. I am glad you can overcome it now.
Tenuously overcome, which is what concerns me. The power flickers so much, as it were.
I vacillate between thinking it is good to recognize or articulate sadness and loss and feeling this is too discouraging, not constructive.
But I see that what I should really lose is the idea that I did it. Seeing it and seeing that it was done is one thing. Seeing it and saying in essence, “Look what you did!” is what is really destructive.
Aha – my analyst said: it is analogous to having been to a war. It would be better not to have been there, but one was.