It seems appropriate, just now.

and another thing Didion wrote.

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself. (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)

I'll get this out of the way first: I love her for the well-lit back alley. If for no other thing that she has ever written, if she never writes again--for the well-lit back alley I am thankful. Behind our restaurants, behind our kitchens, just outside the back doors of our theaters, we step out for some peace and in our hope to get away and as soon as we open the door there is always all that light.

But: I don't find this. Maybe I am particularly good at this, maybe I am, for all my introspective bluster, particularly obtuse when it comes to seeing myself, maybe I have become too good at playing the ostrich, maybe I am too fearful and cannot look. I'm not sure I see the difference, or, if seen, I'm not sure it matters to me. The point remains: I don't find self-deception very hard at all. I see the world the way I want to see it, and unless someone hits me somewhere on my body and/or yells in my ear, I will go on seeing it that way. And even after these events. Someone I refuse to stop being in love with is about to send me a letter, will messenger it to me later this week while she is in the very same Texas city I will be in later this week because, I can only presume, she does not want to see me, this is all about to happen, and yet. And yet.

I don't find self-deception very hard at all, to be honest. To be perfectly honest. I see the world the way I want to see it because it is the only way that I possibly can. And besides, which way would I see it if I weren't to self-deceive? Which point of view out there fails this test? Or passes it, however you want to look at it. It being, after all, up to you....

And another thing she wrote.

I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be...

Because it is funny, every time I look in the mirror I see the same person I've seen for over fifteen years. This being how it seems to me.