Three Days Before the Shooting by Ralph Ellison

MY LOSS, HOWEVER, had not been easy to accept. Emotionally I did not so soon surrender. I fell into a depression which led to several fruitless consultations with an analyst (who told me little that I was prepared to understand, things about my psyche which seemed ridiculous). Then, as suddenly as one's hair is said to turn white overnight, I forgot it. Both my concern with the social future and my shame and sorrow were buried beneath a burst of activity brought on by the war. And all that had defeated me had become, it seemed, part of a time out of mind, a life lived and lost. But now as I stood there in the hospital corridor, it was all back and ripping me apart.

A wave of humiliation swept over me, shaking me, and I thought, So it was that and then that has me now. Two dark women and a piece of lost time bound to a section of a city left long ago which I haven't seen in years. . Here and now dark things and dark people lost in the dark places of my mind are with me, and no search for peace nor pining for the past released them here, but him, sitting there! And I looked at Hickman, feeling as though my chest, my throat, were splitting apart.