Recovered from “Fugitive Memoirs Volume I”
When putting pen to paper and trying to bring myself back to the years leading up to March 2, 2003, I was repeatedly struck by the extensive spans of time I most readily associated with loneliness. I was tempted to credit the instinct that I lived an isolated life by choice, and certainly, there’s a case for that now, but as a young girl I had little control over the fact that I lived in a very isolated environment. One would think that I would have ample time to acclimate to spans without human interaction when I had the run of a huge, more-empty-than-not residence and many long hours of early-morning insomnia for company (as I pen this, three o’clock in the morning is not far off), but what I have recently come to realise is that somehow, despite all that training, I never quite learned to be alone.
It wouldn’t be hard to reject “ennui” as a passive, almost voluntary condition, but, far from the elective complaint of the young, wealthy, and disaffected, it feels very real.
Perhaps there’s some subconscious element to it, some unwitting connection to the celebration of Thanksgiving weekend in the United States that has bled over into my psyche this weekend. Or, perhaps, I just want to keep avoiding the editing work on “She’s a Flight Risk” and “Nape of the Earth” that I must eventually take up again.