Escaping Hibernation.

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this(or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

Winter, 1931-1932 from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One 1931-1934

Days of wanting my body to drown in slumber must stop. I don’t want to be invisible. Give me the dirt and that solitude. Reclaim the precious space inside my head where no one can intrude with their barbs of insecurities. I like knowing there is only one of me – whole – not a mangled half of some other incomplete ego. That is quite an insult don’t you think?

Don’t ever need me like you need air. Grow a pair of gills.

I’m grappling between being swept off by the promise of youth and the reality that all things are finite. I accept that a large majority of people are not wired like me, for better or worse. Natural selection will work its magic.

I need to know who I am out of here.