...of dissociation

"I'd never loved a man before. Until I read you."
He smiled at the oddness of the verb in the context of our conversation.
"No? Well... I'm flattered. Let me tell you about something which happened to me. It has never ceased to haunt me. It was fifteen years ago. In August, around the time when you and I first came to the Midi. The beaches on the front were packed so I was looking for somewhere quieter to brood and to swim. I found an empty sheet of hot rock a long way from everybody else. Out there, beyond the coffin breakwater. It was barren, empty, a sequence of sharp rocks and pools. I took notes, slept during the hottest part of the day. I always travelled alone, lived alone. I've never even shared a room with anyone else, not since childhood. It's odd sometimes, hearing your breathing in the night when I don't sleep. You bring back the taste of my childhood, petit. I chose solitude and the deeper dimensions of that choice, which are inevitable and necessary. I condemned myself to isolation and loneliness. It was the only way I could work, it was my way of defending myself. I used to write in complete silence. I used to spend time listening to silence.

[Hallucinating Foucault, Duncker, P.]