"Oh, what solitude! How sad the smoke on those roofs! What sorrow in those tortuous streets where all are hurrying hither and thither, working and sweating, where thousands of strangers rub against your elbows; a sewer where society is of bodies only, while souls are solitary and alone, where all who hold out a hand to you are prostitutes! "Become corrupt, corrupt, and you will cease to suffer!"This has been the cry of all cities unto man; it is written with charcoal on the walls, on the streets with mud, on men's faces with extravasated blood."
-Musset, La Confession d'un enfant du siècle.
It is my hope therefore, to go into the world and to see all there is to be seen and hear all there is to be heard, and deduce for myself among this whole the good and the evil and the grey in between, and decide what I am.
Every week at mass during petitions I pray for passion, and in this particular which concerns my soul I am happy and proud and violently satisfied. But passions are tiring, and have to be had rest from, no matter how much they are wont to be loved.
I am afraid. I am deathly afraid. I an afraid of not amounting to anything worth anything in the end, and I am afraid I will not end up happy. For all my silent thought and my conclusions drawn thus far, I am afraid they will all fall to ash.
I who have nothing but the strength of my will and the stubbornness of my reasoning and the selfishness of my heart, I feel empty yet. True it is that I have an end in mind that I would have, but in this instant of living time, I look upon these pictures made of grace and beauty and strength, and I, who am only human, recoil from life.
I am wretched, and I am a fool. I am an Ender of Things.
True it may be that one's upbringing is tantamount to one's life. So the children of rich men are brought up like the daughters and sons of kings and queens, and grow up to be the pride of society, with the sort of life that perhaps everyone envies. Then the children of poor people are brought up to be strong, because only the strong survive where riches become scarce. That, or the will of the heart, and the strength of the soul, which is a very romantic and whimsical notion, but believed in nonetheless. People like to have pretty things to believe in and pretty names to call the things they use to cover themselves in. I wonder what I did that was awry. But my life so far has been smooth, strife only with the plaints of childhood and early adolescence, and simple arguments with simple people do not suffice to build a throne of gold.
But then again, I never wanted to be a god. It was my lot in life to be fickle in certain matters. A sound sense of decision and a sort of grounding, I should say, are also absent. Stubbornness I inherited from my father, all his family are so. Patience I got from my mother, or at least I thought I did. In some matters I am wise, and my instincts serve me well. In others I am blasé and wretched, jealous at the slightest and wrecked with ennui for life and its people, whom I find at those times very easy to hate. Fie upon me, then, as the fit seizes me; and I run amok with flashes of lightning across my visage and madness like fire in my veins: it ceases not, I can only wait for its passing. Woe betide you then if you happen upon me, for I will hate you with a savage hate, and mock you and every single one of yours.
I will rage and roar like an animal who has no thought, only the baseness of instinct and the ability to destroy. Finding no one, for the door is locked to admit none, and the phone lies dead to my eyes, I turn upon myself.
I do not know if I touch myself in anger or despair, only that it is desperate, desperate. It is never enough. And it ends as sudden as it starts: the fit leaves me, and perchance I weep, for I am only woman.
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