“Go with your joy,” they insist. I kept an image of my grandmother holding me, crying in terror. They say we may walk around on this earth as mature, decent, self-respecting adults, but what drives us is still that infant, making strange demands from within. I sketched up the faceless, the inoffensively anonymous image; how I wanted to leave it as it stood—dishonestly undisturbed. That night, I dreamt again of childhood. What was the wish fulfillment? That everything was indeed fine. To be lulled back to sleep while awake.

No, this won’t do. I got up and painted the faces—the unbearable faces—the faces and the emotions that I could no longer hide or endure. Masked and attacked, the analyst repeated.