A friend tells me - with an indulgent grin - that I am considered a Nerd because I have actually read something by the new Nobel Prize winner in literature.
I stick my nose up in the air, proudly. Then so be it, I am a Nerd. I analysed a short story by Doris Lessing for a literature class at university years ago. (For truth to be told, the choice of author was not mine... and I did not particularly like the story.) I can hardly remember the story now and have to look it up on the Internet. It is called "To Room Nineteen" and tells about a woman who realises life did not turn out the way it was supposed to do, and now she feels stuck in a role that is not her genuine self. She secretly withdraws to a room in a little hotel - the only place nobody can find or disturb her, the only place she can be herself - only for a few hours at a time, and becomes increasingly addicted to these moments of solitude.
I seem to remember it was not a particularly pleasant story, witnessing the woman withdrawing gradually from reality until the only option is suicide. At the time, hungry for life, I shrugged it off. But now, years later, I suddenly understand how she felt.
The pleasure of escaping from the too harsh reality into a place of quiet solitude where nobody can make any demands on you. Necessary at times, but if you make this place your home you are in danger. Instead of gaining strength from it to go back out there, you stay back in a dreamy state and gradually lose interest in everything the outside world has to offer. And gradually, the anguish creeps up on you. When it becomes too heavy to bear, you have already cut too many ties to the real world to be able to make your way back, or even ask for help.
So I will force myself to go back out there. I will call a friend even when I am tired. I will say yes when someone challenges me. I will put down my book and attend volleyball training even when I have to walk through a snow storm to get there. I will keep drinking my coffee on the balcony, shivering in the cold but with the sun on my face.
3 comments:
Is this a biography? Of almost every individual whose existential plane does not contain utopic fluffy-pink clouds?
After reading this, I feel like spring-cleaning my persona's attic: call up a few cousins, restrain myself from trampling some poor soul underfoot, and other such obssessive-compulsive activities that constitute me.
Cocoons are prisons.
And you, I know, despise prisons.
I suppose it's difficult for me to understand... but well. I'll know it when time comes, won't I?
That shell you create for youself to recuperate while the world is moving too fast, often ends up stifling you if you stay in there for too long.
You need new air. I wish you strength. :]
Post a Comment