It's also hilarious again. I liked to think a little vainly of myself, that I was different or special. But I wasn't that in a particularly pronounced way and would have found it basically strange to have demanded it of myself to learn to shoot, for example, in an environment that gave me all that was accepted as authority and safe. But maybe as a woman I'm not really interested in this self-defence stuff (I was more in my younger years, but it never really happened because I lacked interest in it).

To be prepared to die for the community, you have to live in one in the first place, don't you? Already my neighbours or the neighbours of neighbours have nothing to do with me.... I have forgotten what it is like to live in close and permanent communities. A very difficult and always painful realisation.

I have been trying to make contact with my immediate neighbours for a long time, but they are very closed and there is nothing they ask me for help with, although I am the one who seeks opportunities for others to feel helpful. I have lived in the same flat for many years and have seen many come and go. There have been maybe one or two people in that time who knocked on my door and wanted something (sugar or eggs or something else, I don't remember). I happily gave it.