We disagreed about the how reasonable these baggages were to carry in life - in fact, we disagreed even about the definition of what is "reasonable"...
In most ways, they exhausted her energies - but on the other hand, they also got her in touch with a source of energy within, which was necessary for her to go beyond her psycho-social destiny...
...The candle and the flame were both within her. It was in the nature of things that one part of her would consume the other... what most saw from outside was the flickering of light...
These excerpts from her diary date back during 1973-77 period:
...I am feeling like dying. I always do. I think I’m mad or going towards that-ness, because I can’t, simply can’t, adjust. Why should I. I seem to myself to be doing the right thing but others don’t appear to think so. Wonder how the younger ones adjust better than me.
I think the worst thing that could have ever happened to me is that I was born a girl. Horrid mistake that can’t be undone. If only I was a boy, I could have had hopes of breaking sooner or later. Sometimes I accept myself, and at other times don’t. Today I can’t. I begin to hate myself.
And I have even thought why I couldn’t be blessesd with exceptional brains. And why do my parents bring up fashionably, and expect me to conform to conservativism. I know, all my bad points would become enviable good qualities if I were a boy. Wish I could die. Why have I to suffer such a lot. I sincerely hate it all.
To have worked very hard in studying and resultant spectacles and spots and ill health and scowling habits and nasty nature and social dislike and selfish rudeness; to have sacrificed one’s best years in never trying to enjoy oneself, never trying to be happy and gay or young and mirthful, and wasting one’s time in chairs with books, earning a sedentary figure over all the years, getting on to 21 and never yet experiencing the ardor of youth - just books, books and more books, trips to the library for the sake of diversion, making notes for entertainment, lugging around heavy bags full of rotten old course books, passing sleepless nights and gaining a hideous look day by day, cups of tea and dissolving complexion, alarm clocks and candles and tables and chairs.
This is life - life for a constant period of 18 years or so. And no break in it at all. You were working towards an ideal - an ambition to last you for a whole life, and suddenly you are threatened with a picture of same old drudgery that you dread, and people expect you to be happy with it. Whatever they think will be suitable for you is so monotonous and so worthless that you cannot agree with it for even an instant.
And you fear that someday you will be disillusioned and all your ideas will be shattered without any scruples - and the only way out will be something like a cup of hemlock.
There remains the frustration of knowing that you could have been just as good as any other girl and happier without all the burden and tension of future anticipations and striving towards them, to have retained the soft delicacy of your youth, to be young still, not bowed with troubled, to look forward to life’s each day, and learn the silent happiness contained in it - would all this have not been a prospect than the one stretches out at present, a listless existence and life led with accusations, pointing fingers, whispered comments, besides troubling days and lonely nights, and a thousand fears of the hundreds of black alleys open to swallow you up....
But then, would it have been possible to have all those beautiful joys? for me!
There lies the satisfaction of being confident of having one way out, the best - a cup of hemlock ... if not vernol, if not cyanide, morphine...
Perchance there is sure to be bliss in the end - all pain ends in blissful sleep - painful living followed by luxuriant sleep of eternity!
To break or not to break, to give or to take, to have or not to have is the problem.
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