From the “Mimi” journal. In my adolescence, I started writing a journal. I had read the Diary of Anne Frank, and copied her idea of letters to an invisible friend. This was written in 1959 when I was 17.
Thursday, 26 November
Dear Mimi,
Today is Thanksgiving Day, but I can’t think of anything to be thankful for. It’s awful to be so unhappy all the time. I feel constricted and grey in my chest and I feel as though I’ll never be happy again. I can’t even be thankful for a cherry colored sunset because even that thought does not open up my heart. I want to write poetry but I’m too discouraged, dried up inside, to do anything. Daddy says I’m unhappy because I want to be but I hate being miserable. I can’t figure out whether it’s because of Don or because I am utterly incapable of being normal and healthy and happy. Someday — I guess — but someday seems so far off. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day unto the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays light fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. We are all lost here on this rock, that goes around the sun without meaning. O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again. I shall always be a borrower and that hurts too. Why can I not create in any medium? Why, why, why? Why am I so discouraged that I can’t work and don’t care about college or the future or anything? It all seems so hopeless. I wish I could go crazy or get sick or something. For a girl who wants to do everything all the way or not at all, it’s awfully frustrating to be continually forced into the middle.
Yours in misery,
Jenny