Proximity and closeness are not the same.

Má leaves me but I'm not alone, and a terrifying thought creeps into my head. Family is now something I have created and not just something I was born into.

(The proximity) is as much of it as anything else,

When someone is close by, you just know it.

This feeling of being in proximity to something that’s lost to you, it seems like my whole life right now.

Ivan tells Anna: "I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman . . . as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing . . . [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else.