Loneliness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Didn’t even say Au revoir! Walks off swinging her hat and humming to herself like. That’s a whore for you! A good lay though. I think I liked her better than my virgin. There’s something depraved about screwing a woman who doesn’t give a fuck about it. It heats your blood. ...” And then, after a moment’s meditation—“Can you imagine what she’d be like if she had any feelings?” “Listen,” he says, “I want you to come to the Club with me tomorrow afternoon... there’s a dance on.” “I can’t tomorrow, Joe. I promised to help Carl out. ...” “Listen, forget that prick! I want you to do me a favor. It’s like this”—he commences to mold his hands again. “I’ve got a cunt lined up... she promised to stay with me on my night off. But I’m not positive about her yet. She’s got a mother, you see... some shit of a painter, she chews my ear off every time I see her. I think the truth is, the mother’s jealous. I don’t think she’d mind so much if I gave her a lay first. You know how it is. ... Anyway, I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind taking the mother... she’s not so bad... if I hadn’t seen the daughter I might have considered her myself. The daughter’s nice and young, fresh like, you know what I mean? There’s a clean smell to her. ...” “Listen, Joe, you’d better find somebody else. ...” “Aw, don’t take it like that! I know how you feel about it. It’s only a little favor I’m asking you to do for me. I don’t know to get rid of the old hen. I thought first I’d get drunk and ditch her—but I don’t think the young one’d like that. They’re sentimental like. They come from Minnesota or somewhere. Anyway, come around tomorrow and wake me up, will you? Otherwise I’ll oversleep. And besides, I want you to help me find a room. You know I’m helpless. Find me a room in a quiet street, somewhere near here. I’ve got to stay around here... I’ve got credit here. Listen, promise me you’ll do that for me. I’ll buy you a meal now and then. Come around anyway, because I go nuts talking to these foolish cunts. I want to talk to you about Havelock Ellis. Jesus, I’ve had the book out for three weeks now and I haven’t looked at it. You sort of rot here. Would you believe it, I’ve never been to the Louvre—nor the Comédie- Française. Is it worth going to those joints? Still, it sort of takes your mind off things, I suppose. What do you do with yourself all day? Don’t you get bored? What do you do for a lay? Listen... come here! Don’t run away yet... I’m lonely. Do you know something—if this keeps up another year I’ll go nuts.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  Then Ukyo took courage and wrote a letter with trembling hand, and entrusted it to Samanosuke. When Samanosuke reached the palace he met Uneme, who was looking in silence at the flowers in the garden. Uneme saw him, and said: 'Dear friend, I have been very busy every evening amusing my Lord with Nô plays, and this evening I have only come out for a few moments to breathe a little air. I have read my master the ancient classical poem "Seuin Kokin," and was alone and without a friend except for the silent cherry blooms. I am very lonely.' And he looked tenderly at Samanosuke. `Here is another silent flower, Uneme,' said Samanosuke, and held out the letter to him. Uneme smiled at him and said: 'This letter cannot be for me, dear friend.' He went behind some thick trees to read it. He was touched by the letter, and kindly replied to Samanosuke: 'I cannot remain unmoved if he suffers so much for me.' When Ukyo received Uneme's answer, he was filled with joy, and quickly recovered his health. And the three young men loved each other with a loyal and harmonious love. Now it happened that their master took into his service a new courtier named Shyuzen Hosono. This man was rough, evil, and of a hasty temper; he had no finesse or elegance; he was continually boasting of his exploits, and no one liked him. When he saw Ukyo he fell in love with him; but he had not the delicacy to make his love known to him in some charming letter: he had not sufficiently good taste for that. He pursued Ukyo with smiles and tears whenever he saw him alone in the palace or the garden. But Ukyo despised him. The Lord had a servant with his head shaven, whose duty it was to take care of the utensils belonging to the tea ritual. He was named Shyusai Tushikï, and had become the intimate friend of Shyuzen; so he undertook to convey a message from him to Ukyo. Accordingly he said one day to Ukyo: 'I pray you to give Shyuzen a kind answer. He loves you passionately,' and gave him Shyuzen's letter. But Ukyo threw the letter away and said: 'It is not your business to carry love-letters. Attend to your duty of keeping the master's house clean for tea matters,' and went away.

• From Between Us

  Perspective taking makes a person ponder about how they can improve to better meet others’ expectations, and to persevere and overcome externally encountered adversities. The idea that omoiyari has to be cultivated, but cannot be forced onto kids until they are ready, prevails in Japanese preschool practices. Teachers show great restraint, even if the interactions between preschoolers are conflictual, and at times aggressive. Witness an episode between Nao, the newest child at a preschool, and several of her classmates: Nao pulls a stuffed bear away from another girl, Reiko. [ . . . The teacher] Morito tells them to “junken” (to do the game “paper, rock, scissors”) to settle their dispute. Reiko’s scissors beat Nao’s paper. Morito says to Nao, “We’ll let Reiko put the bear away today, right.” Nao defiantly says, “No!” Morita replies, firmly, “We did ‘junken.’” Nao sits on the floor and sulks. Reiko and her twin sister and constant companion, Seiko, approach Nao and tell her that she should not have tried to grab the bear away from them. Nao replies, “Seiko-chan and Reiko-chan are stupid.” Seiko replies, “Well it is your fault. You put the bear down. That’s why we took it.” After an interruption by some structured class activities, the bear saga continues, with Nao and the other girls grabbing the bear from each other. In the end, the other girls explain to Nao once again that her turn was over when she put the bear down. Nao, pouting, is led away to the other side of the room by Seiko, who says to her: “You cannot do that. Do you understand? Promise?” Linking little fingers with Nao, the two girls swing their arms back and forth as they sing, “Keep this promise, or swallow a thousand needles.” All the while Morita-sensei, the teacher, watches what is going on, but does not interfere. She stays back and observes. She interprets the episode as Nao expressing amae, in a whiny and aggressive way, and the others girls giving her attention and in the end including her, and thus showing omoiyari. Interestingly, amae and omoiyari, but also loneliness, are valued emotions in Japan because they “fuel the desire of sociality.” Loneliness motivates people to seek the company of others, and when relayed to others through amae, provokes the empathetic response of others inviting the person to join the group. Most Japanese teachers would agree with Morita-sensei and not interfere; in this way children learn to interpret amae, and give omoiyari. In contrast, U.S. teachers who see the interaction on tape think the teacher should have interfered. They see the teacher’s nonintervention as a failure to protect children from harming each other, and they also suspect that the teacher has not been paying attention (or she would have interfered!).

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Since publishing my first book, I have met so many people who made me view the world differently. There is none more rare and precious than Colleen Hoover. She is a light shining in darkness. Thank you for loving Mud Vein, and for recognizing our red thread. You have no heart, and you have the biggest heart. And finally, to the God who says: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” I live for you, mud vein and all. Three months after I get home, I drive to the hospital to see Isaac. I don’t know if he wants to see me. He hasn’t tried to contact me since I’ve been back. It hurts after the emotional violence we experienced together, but it’s not like I tried to contact him either. I wonder if he told Daphne everything. Maybe that’s why… I don’t know what to say. What to feel. Relief because we both survived? Do we talk about what happened? I miss him. Sometimes I wish we could go back, and that’s just sick. I feel as if I have Stockholm Syndrome, but not for a person—for a house in the snow. I pull into a space and sit in my car for at least an hour, picking at the rubber on the steering wheel. I called ahead, so I know he’s here. I don’t know what it’s going to feel like to see him. I held his body while he was dying. He held mine. We survived something together. How do you stand back and shake someone’s hand in the real world when you were clutched together in a nightmare? I fling open my car door and it cracks against the side of an already beat up minivan. “Sorry,” I tell it, before stepping away. The doors to the hospital slide open, and I take a moment to look around. Nothing has changed. It’s still too cold in here; the fountain still sprays a crooked stream into air that smells deeply of antiseptic. Nurses and doctors cross paths, charts clutched against chests or hanging droopy from their hands. It all stayed the same while I was changing. I turn my face toward the parking lot. I want to leave, stay out of this world. No one but Isaac knows what it was like. It makes me feel like the only person on the planet. It makes me angry. I need to talk to him. He’s the only one. I walk. Then I’m in the elevator, sliding slowly up to his floor. He is probably doing rounds, but I’ll wait in his office. I just need a few minutes. Just a few. I walk quickly once the doors open. His office is just around the corner and past the vending machine. “Senna?” I spin. Daphne is standing a few feet away.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Or maybe she taught me, and someone taught her. I don’t know. We can’t blame our parents for everything. I don’t think I care anymore. It’s just the way it is. I walk out of the store. I put her to rest. Three months after I get home, I drive to the hospital to see Isaac. I don’t know if he wants to see me. He hasn’t tried to contact me since I’ve been back. It hurts after the emotional violence we experienced together, but it’s not like I tried to contact him either. I wonder if he told Daphne everything. Maybe that’s why… I don’t know what to say. What to feel. Relief because we both survived? Do we talk about what happened? I miss him. Sometimes I wish we could go back, and that’s just sick. I feel as if I have Stockholm Syndrome, but not for a person—for a house in the snow. I pull into a space and sit in my car for at least an hour, picking at the rubber on the steering wheel. I called ahead, so I know he’s here. I don’t know what it’s going to feel like to see him. I held his body while he was dying. He held mine. We survived something together. How do you stand back and shake someone’s hand in the real world when you were clutched together in a nightmare? I fling open my car door and it cracks against the side of an already beat up minivan. “Sorry,” I tell it, before stepping away. The doors to the hospital slide open, and I take a moment to look around. Nothing has changed. It’s still too cold in here; the fountain still sprays a crooked stream into air that smells deeply of antiseptic. Nurses and doctors cross paths, charts clutched against chests or hanging droopy from their hands. It all stayed the same while I was changing. I turn my face toward the parking lot. I want to leave, stay out of this world. No one but Isaac knows what it was like. It makes me feel like the only person on the planet. It makes me angry. I need to talk to him. He’s the only one. I walk. Then I’m in the elevator, sliding slowly up to his floor. He is probably doing rounds, but I’ll wait in his office. I just need a few minutes. Just a few. I walk quickly once the doors open. His office is just around the corner and past the vending machine. “Senna?” I spin. Daphne is standing a few feet away. She is wearing black scrubs and a stethoscope is hanging around her neck. She looks tired and beautiful. “Hello,” I say. We stand looking at each other for a minute, before I break the silence. I wasn’t expecting to see her.

• From Between Us

  How different were Ghanaian views on friendship from American ones? Having friends was a good thing for Americans, who reported more trust in friendship relationships than did Ghanaians. Consistently, more American than Ghanaian participants reported that they had many friends, and the majority of Americans interviewed claimed that they had more friends than other people (only a minority of Ghanaian participants did so). Americans also described their friendships as closer than did Ghanaians. Friendship in American contexts meant emotional support and shared interest (spending a lot of time) first, and was also characterized by trust and respect. If having friends is good in American contexts, then not having friends is a sad thing. Americans thought that a person without any friends would be lonely and regrettable. In contrast, Ghanaians thought a person without friends was bad and wrong, not sad or regrettable. If friendship is about material support, then a person without friends is stingy and selfish. In other words, individuals from Ghana were not as much concerned with assuring themselves of company (which they had already) as they were with being exploited, or with being harmed by kin. Again, this is not to say that close relationships are less valued, just that the “right” emotions focus on limiting the burdens of such relationships, rather than enhancing mutual affirmation, admiration, and belonging. Closeness may also be limited in order to avoid burdening the other person, as is apparent from research on social support. My colleagues, psychologists Heejung Kim, David Sherman, and Shelley Taylor, tried to answer the question of whether individuals in interdependent cultures have and seek more social support, that is, confirmation from others that they are “loved and cared for, esteemed and valued, and part of a network of communication and mutual obligations.” They found that Asian American and Latinx college students reported seeking less, not more, social support than their white American counterparts when dealing with stress, the reason being that they did not want to bother others with their own problems. The partner’s needs, rather than their own, figured centrally into the calculation of approaching the partner for social support. When their partner seemed more available, more social support was sought. For example, Asian American romantic couples engaged in more social sharing with their partners, when these partners were trying to solve an easy rather than a hard puzzle. The point is: in non-WEIRD cultural contexts where individuals tend to prioritize relationship needs over their own, individuals hesitate to ask for “love” or reassurance. Under normal circumstances, they are reluctant to burden the relationship. In one experiment, white American and Asian Americans were given three minutes to prepare a speech on why they would be a good administrative assistant in the Psychology department. All participants then were asked to count backward from 2,083 by thirteens for five minutes, while the experimenter urged them to go faster. Then they delivered their speech. Stressful, right? It was.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  It sounded too easy, too pat. Madam spoke of the daycare centers, of kindergartens where children could be cared for on collective farms. The kindergartens are free in large cities like Moscow and Tashkent. But in Samarkand, there’s a nominal fee of about two rubles a month, which is very little, she said. I asked her one question, whether “men are encouraged to work in the kindergartens to give the children a gentle male figure at an early age.” Madam Izbalkhan hesitated for a moment. “No,” she said. “We like to believe that when the children come to the kindergarten they acquire a second mother.” Madam Izbalkhan was a very strong and beautiful and forthright woman, excellently in charge of her facts, with a great deal of presence, and I returned from my meeting with her almost overwhelmed and over-graped. The grapes in Uzbekistan are incredible fruit. They seem to have a life of their own. They’re called “the bridesmaid’s little finger,” and that’s about the size of them. They’re very long, and green, and they’re absolutely the most delicious. I came away with revolutionary women in my head. But I feel very much now still that we, Black Americans, exist alone in the mouth of the dragon. As I’ve always suspected, outside of rhetoric and proclamations of solidarity, there is no help, except ourselves. When I asked directly about the USSR’s attitude toward American racism, Madam said reproachfully that of course the USSR cannot interfere in the internal affairs of any other nation. I wish now I had asked her about Russian Jews. In Samarkand, Helen and I went looking for a fruit market. She inquired directions from a man who had passed by with either his little girl or his granddaughter, but I tend to think his little girl because so many of the adults here in Uzbekistan look much older than they are. It must be a quality of the dry air. Anyway, Helen stopped to inquire directions to the market and this gave him an opening, as frequently happens in Russia, to discuss anything. He wanted to know from Helen whether I was from Africa, and when he heard I was from America, then he really wanted to discuss American Black people. There seems to be quite an interest in Black Americans among the peoples of Russia, but it’s an interest that is played down somewhat. Fikre, my Ethiopian companion who studied at the university, was often questioned about me in Russian. I had developed enough of an ear for the language to be able to notice that. Fikre frequently did not say I was from America. Most people in Tashkent and Samarkand who I met thought I was African or from Cuba, and everyone is also very interested in Cuba. This fascination with all things American is something that keeps coming up over and over again. This man wanted to know from me whether American Black people were allowed to go to school.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I left him a better pillow and a warmer blanket. There was one particular night that he didn’t arrive until almost eleven. I’d given up on him coming altogether, thinking our strange relationship had finally run its course. I was on my way up the stairs when I heard a quiet knock on the door. Just a rap rap rap. It could have been a gust of wind it was so light. But in my hope I heard it. He didn’t look at me when I opened the door. Or wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. He seemed to be finding my pavers particularly interesting, and then the spot just above my left shoulder. He had dark crescents under his eyes, two hollow moons cradling his lashes. It would have been a hard call to decide who looked worse—me in my layers of clothing or Isaac with his droopy shoulders. We both looked beat up. I tried to pretend I wasn’t watching him as he walked to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. When he came out, the top two buttons of his shirt were undone and his sleeves were rolled to his elbows. He never brought a change of clothes. He slept in what he wore and left early in the morning, presumably to go home and shower. I didn’t know where he lived, how old he was, or where he went to medical school. All the things you found out by asking questions. I did know that he drove a hybrid. He wore aftershave that smelled like chai tea spilled on old leather. Three times a week he grocery shopped. Always paper bags; most of Washington is composed of people trying to save the planet, one Coke can at a time. I always chose plastic just to be defiant. Now I had mounds of paper grocery bags stacked on my pantry floor, all neatly folded. He’d started wheeling the green recycling can to the curb on Thursdays. I was officially and unwillingly part of the green people cult. On Sundays he’d steal my neighbor’s paper. It’s the only thing I really liked about him. Isaac opened the fridge and stared inside, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “There’s nothing here,” he said. “Let’s go out for dinner.” Not what I was expecting. I immediately felt like I couldn’t breathe. I backed up until my heels were pressing against the stairs. I hadn’t left the house in twenty-two days. I was afraid. Afraid that nothing would be the same, afraid that everything would be the same. Afraid of this man who I didn’t know, and who was speaking to me with so much familiarity. Let’s go out to dinner. Like we did this all the time.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  And I don’t have a mother anymore.” What I heard her saying was that no other Black woman would ever see who she was, ever trust or be trusted by her again. I heard in her cry of loneliness the source of the romance between Black women and our mommas. Little Black girls, tutored by hate into wanting to become anything else. We cut our eyes at sister because she can only reflect what everybody else except momma seemed to know — that we were hateful, or ugly, or worthless, but certainly unblessed. We were not boys and we were not white, so we counted for less than nothing, except to our mommas. If we can learn to give ourselves the recognition and acceptance that we have come to expect only from our mommas, Black women will be able to see each other much more clearly and deal with each other much more directly. I think about the harshness that exists so often within the least encounter between Black women, the judgment and the sizing up, that cruel refusal to connect. I know sometimes I feel like it is worth my life to disagree with another Black woman. Better to ignore her, withdraw from her, go around her, just don’t deal with her. Not just because she irritates me, but because she might destroy me with the cruel force of her response to what must feel like an affront, namely me. Or I might destroy her with the force of mine, for the very same reason. The fears are equal. Once I can absorb the particulars of my life as a Black woman, and multiply them by my two children and all the days of our collective Black lives, and I do not falter beneath the weight — what Black woman is not a celebration, like water, like sunlight, like rock — is it any wonder that my voice is harsh? Now to require of myself the effort of awareness, so that harshness will not function in the places it is least deserved — toward my sisters. Why do Black women reserve a particular voice of fury and disappointment for each other? Who is it we must destroy when we attack each other with that tone of predetermined and correct annihilation? We reduce one another to our own lowest common denominator, and then we proceed to try and obliterate what we most desire to love and touch, the problematic self, unclaimed but fiercely guarded from the other. This cruelty between us, this harshness, is a piece of the legacy of hate with which we were inoculated from the time we were born by those who intended it to be an injection of death. But we adapted, learned to take it in and use it, unscrutinized.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  It’s a sad reality that cultures and families often seem hell-bent on making the interplay of love and lust infinitely more difficult than it needs to be. The framework for adult love-lust interactions is sketched out during childhood and adolescence. Adult lust evolves out of simple experiences of sexual and sensual curiosity. The precursors to adult love are early emotional attachments, first to Mom, then to the larger family, and eventually to a community of friends and acquaintances. When kids play house, mimic favorite TV characters, simulate flirtatious poses or embraces, or initiate or reject nudity or sexy games with their peers, they’re engaging in the important work that Dr. John Money calls “sexual rehearsal play.”6 Through positive sex play kids learn about their own and others’ bodies. At the same time, the complex interactions and negotiations required by their games provide opportunities for practicing skills of social conduct. When adults try to protect children by forbidding sex play with age-mates, the message is powerfully communicated that their curiosities are bad, setting the stage for a later mistrust of lust. These “protected” children are frequently unprepared to handle the more demanding interpersonal challenges of adolescence. As adults they often end up confused or in conflict about matters of love and lust.7 For those who hold the twin beliefs that love is good and lust is bad, two basic strategies are available for dealing with this dichotomy. One approach seeks to tame or to purify lust by fusing it with love so that lusty urges are interpreted as love, an especially common response to sex-negative training among women. Rushes of sensation that many would call lust are interpreted as love or affection. A love-lust fusion can be visualized like this: [image file=image_rsrc3FE.jpg] When sex must always be joined with love, even casual sex can become infused with emotion and meaning. Unfortunately, this special intensity is typically followed by the realization that the partner isn’t feeling the same way. More often than not, the dream of lust redeemed by love quickly turns to loneliness. The inability to experience lust as separate from love clouds one’s judgment and is responsible for incalculable unnecessary suffering. Another response to love-lust conflicts, more common among men, is to protect the purity of love by creating an invisible barrier between it and lust so that a person becomes unable to feel both at the same time or with the same person. The splitting apart of love and lust can be visualized like this: [image file=image_rsrc3FF.jpg] When someone pursues lustful aims with complete detachment from tenderness and affection, erotic attention narrows to a laser like focus on maximum genital arousal. The result is often a level of excitation that is qualitatively different than any other kind—hotter, more insistent, a unique psychophysical high. Unfortunately, love-lust splits make it difficult or impossible to build and maintain sexual relationships because affection intrudes, reducing or obliterating the sought-after intensity.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  There is only the conscious focusing within each of my days to move against them, wherever I come up against these particular manifestations of the same disease. By seeing who the we is, we learn to use our energies with greater precision against our enemies rather than against ourselves. In the 60s, white america — racist and liberal alike — was more than pleased to sit back as spectator while Black militant fought Black Muslim, Black Nationalist badmouthed the non-violent, and Black women were told that our only useful position in the Black Power movement was prone. The existence of Black lesbian and gay people was not even allowed to cross the public consciousness of Black america. We know in the 1980s, from documents gained through the Freedom of Information Act, that the FBI and CIA used our intolerance of difference to foment confusion and tragedy in segment after segment of Black communities of the 60s. Black was beautiful, but still suspect, and too often our forums for debate became stages for playing who’s-Blacker-than-who or who’s-poorer-than-who games, ones in which there can be no winners. The 60s for me was a time of promise and excitement, but the 60s was also a time of isolation and frustration from within. It often felt like I was working and raising my children in a vacuum, and that it was my own fault — if I was only Blacker, things would be fine. It was a time of much wasted energy, and I was often in a lot of pain. Either I denied or chose between various aspects of my identity, or my work and my Blackness would be unacceptable. As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody’s comfortable prejudices of who I should be. That is how I learned that if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive. My poetry, my life, my work, my energies for struggle were not acceptable unless I pretended to match somebody else’s norm. I learned that not only couldn’t I succeed at that game, but the energy needed for that masquerade would be lost to my work. And there were babies to raise, students to teach. The Vietnam War was escalating, our cities were burning, more and more of our school kids were nodding out in the halls, junk was overtaking our streets. We needed articulate power, not conformity. There were other strong Black workers whose visions were racked and silenced upon some imagined grid of narrow Blackness. Nor were Black women immune. At a national meeting of Black women for political action, a young civil rights activist who had been beaten and imprisoned in Mississippi only a few years before, was trashed and silenced as suspect because of her white husband.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “I wish this song would stop playing.” I pick up my plate and start eating. These are Isaac’s plates. Or were his plates. I only ate at his house once. He probably has the type of china now that married people have. I think about his wife. Small and pretty, eating off her china alone because her husband is missing. She doesn’t feel like eating, but she’s doing it anyway because of the baby. The baby they tried and tried for. I blink the image of her away. She helped save my life. I wonder if they’ve tied our disappearances together? Daphne knew some of what happened with Isaac and me. They had been seeing each other when he met me. He put everything on hold with her during those months he was keeping me alive. “Senna,” he says. I don’t lift my head. I’m trying not to crack. There is rice on my plate. I count the grains. “It took me a long time…” he pauses. “To stop feeling you everywhere.” “Isaac, you don’t have to. Really. I get it. You want to be with your family.” “We’re not good at this,” he says. “The talking.” He sets his plate down. I hear the clatter of silverware. “But I want you to know one thing about me. Want being the key word, Senna. I know you don’t need words from me.” I brace myself against the rice; it’s all that stands between me and my feelings. Rice. “You’ve been silent your whole life. You were silent when we met, silent when you suffered. Silent when life kept hitting you. I was like that too, a little. But not like you. You are a stillness. And I tried to move you. It didn’t work. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t move me. I heard everything you didn’t say. I heard it so loudly that I couldn’t shut it off. Your silence, Senna, I hear it so loudly.” I set my plate down and wipe my palms on my pant legs. I have yet to look at him, but I hear the angst in his voice. I have nothing to say. I don’t know what to say. That proves his point, and I don’t want him to be right. “I hear you still.” I stand up. I upset my plate; it topples. “Isaac, stop.” But he doesn’t. “It’s never that I don’t want to be with you. It’s that you don’t want to be with me.” I bolt for the ladder. I don’t even bother using the rungs. I jump … land on my haunches. I feel feral. “The life you choose to live is the essence of who you arrre.” I am an animal, bent on surviving. I let nothing in. I let nothing out. [image file=image28.jpg] Depression

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  The doors to the hospital slide open, and I take a moment to look around. Nothing has changed. It’s still too cold in here; the fountain still sprays a crooked stream into air that smells deeply of antiseptic. Nurses and doctors cross paths, charts clutched against chests or hanging droopy from their hands. It all stayed the same while I was changing. I turn my face toward the parking lot. I want to leave, stay out of this world. No one but Isaac knows what it was like. It makes me feel like the only person on the planet. It makes me angry. I need to talk to him. He’s the only one. I walk. Then I’m in the elevator, sliding slowly up to his floor. He is probably doing rounds, but I’ll wait in his office. I just need a few minutes. Just a few. I walk quickly once the doors open. His office is just around the corner and past the vending machine. “Senna?” I spin. Daphne is standing a few feet away. She is wearing black scrubs and a stethoscope is hanging around her neck. She looks tired and beautiful. “Hello,” I say. We stand looking at each other for a minute, before I break the silence. I wasn’t expecting to see her. It was stupid. An oversight. I didn’t come here to make her uncomfortable. “I came to see—” “I’ll get him for you,” she says, quickly. I am surprised. I watch as she turns on her heel and trots down the hallway. Maybe he didn’t tell her everything. He won’t speak to the news stations either. My agent called me days after I got back, wanting to know if I could write a book detailing what happened to me—to us. The truth is I don’t know that I’ll ever write another book. And I’ll never tell about what happened in that house. It’s all mine. When I see him I hurt. He looks great. Not the skeleton man I kissed goodbye. But there are more lines around his eyes. I hope I put a few there. “Hello, Senna,” he says. I want to cry and laugh. “Hi.” He motions for his office door. He has to open it with a key. Isaac steps inside first and turns on the light. I cast a quick glance over my shoulder before walking in to see if Daphne is lurking anywhere. Thankfully, she’s not. I can’t bear her burdens on top of the ones I’m already carrying. We sit. It’s not uncomfortable, but it’s not entirely tea and cookies either. Isaac sits behind his desk, but after a minute he comes and sits in the chair next to me. “You’re back to work,” I say. “Couldn’t stay away.” “I tried.” He shakes his head. “I went to Hawaii and saw a shrink.” I sort of laugh at that one. “Brave.”

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The cover features her in a black dress, lips parted, arms crossed, her pale shoulders hunched, and her waist-length red hair stirring in the breeze. Although the album received little notice, Diana decided to leave her husband, and the Sea Org, and marry John Ryan, a public Scientologist who had produced her record. She moved to Los Angeles to dedicate herself to music. Horwich agreed to the divorce, but he refused to part with Roanne, who was two years old at the time. Hubbard strongly supported this decision, but Mary Sue was opposed. She wanted her granddaughter to be nearby, and she began agitating for Diana to gain custody. Several missions were sent to bargain with Diana, but she was unmoved. Finally, Jesse Prince got the assignment. “It was a do or die mission,” he recalled. If he didn’t succeed in gaining clear custody of Roanne for Horwich, he would be sent back to the RPF. For whatever reason, Diana signed the release he put in front of her. Hubbard was thrilled. He rewarded Prince with a leather coat, a gold chain, some cash, and an M14 assault rifle. Suzette, Diana’s younger sister, was increasingly disaffected. Quentin’s death had been a blow, but the fact that there had been no ceremony afterward—his name was essentially erased from family history—left her embittered and wary. She longed for the warmth of her Saint Hill childhood, when her mother would read to her and her father would laugh and toss her in the air. Those days were long gone. The forces pulling her family apart were far too powerful for her to resist. She wanted nothing more than to walk away and start a family of her own. But that was not so easily done. She had tried to elope with another Sea Org member she had met years before, in Washington. “We had fallen in love and wanted to get married and live together for the rest of our lives,” her suitor, Arnaldo Lerma, later said. He flew to Clearwater; they got blood tests and a marriage license. Suzette then confessed the plan in an auditing session. “She spilled the beans and I got arrested—well, detained,” Lerma said. “I remember being in a room with a chair and a light bulb and two guys outside the door. I was interrogated for several hours. I was not struck, hit, or physically abused. However, what I do remember is the deal I was offered: ‘We will give you a guarantee of safe passage out of the state of Florida with all body parts attached if you tell Suzette Hubbard the marriage is off.’ ” Lerma did as he was told, leaving the church as well. Later, when Hubbard learned about another man Suzette was interested in, he paid him to leave her alone. She was isolated and desperately lonely. She did finally get married to a Scientologist named Michael Titmus, in 1980, when she was twenty-five, but her father didn’t trust him either.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  H. Lawrence in a comment on Beethoven's letters c a lled " th e cruc ifixi o n i nto isolate individuality". 17 B ei ng cut off fro m or di n ary fulfilmen ts can also mean being cut off from ot her peop l e , on th e m a r gins of society, misunderstood, despised. This has 42.4 • S U B TL E R LA NG U A G ES been a recurring picture of the fate of the artist in the last two centuries,. whether presented in forms of maudlin self-pity, as a s uccessor to Werth e ri a n.· Weltschmerz, or seen steadily and without self-dramatization as an inescap able predicament. The opposition of the visionary artist and the blind, or "philistine", "bourgeois" society brings together this vision of an exceptional fate and the hostility to commercial capitalist civilization. United to a historical narrativ e of advancing discovery, it can yield the idea or myth of the avant-garde. Some are destined to move ahead of the huge advancing column, to strike out on their own. Their work is not, cannot be understood in their time. But much later, the rest will catch up , and t he original few will be recognized and celebrated after death. This image expresses the opposition between artist and society-his exclusion. But it also allows for the connection, one might also say the collusion between them. For it contains the idea that the others catch up-to where the earlier trail-blazers were, that is; a new wave will have since gone beyond the general comprehension and been misunderstood in its turn. Moreover, once this image becomes generally accepted; once it becomes not just the self-image of the misunderstoo d artist, but the socially accredited s tereotype, the collusion between bourgeois and artist finds a language. Student s of nineteenth-century "Bohemia" in Paris have remarked how ambivalent the relations were between the bourgeois world and the demi monde of the artist. 1 8 It was not just that some later well-established bourgeois passed a period of their youth in "Bohemia". It was also that it fed the bourgeois imagination, as the success of a host of works, including Murger's novel and Puccini's opera, attests. 1 9 Even those who operate fully with in commercial civilization, who run their lives by disengaged, instrumen tal reason, want to have some part in the epiphanies of the creative imagination. These must be confined; they cannot be allowed to break out and realize their full, often anti-moral and usually anti-instrumental , intent. But t hey must be there. Nor should this be surprising.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Now that you have seen how negative emotions can cause a great deal of trouble, I hope you won’t conclude—as many sex therapists and educators erroneously do—that anxiety and guilt are solely the enemies of good sex. If that were the case, eliminating the destructive side effects of these emotions would be easy because few people would be drawn to them in the first place. However, the paradoxical perspective prepares us to accept a more complicated reality. Only by recognizing the untidy fact that emotions function as either aphrodisiacs or antiaphrodisiacs can we empathize with the struggles of people like Brian or Nancy. Only when we see the true nature of their dilemma do new possibilities become visible on the horizon. TROUBLESOME ATTRACTIONSSexual attractions are among life’s elemental pleasures. The simple act of noticing another or being noticed stimulates aliveness and vitality. Most people you find attractive are just passing treats for the eyes, although some become objects of longing or characters in fantasies. Not all attractions are pleasant, though. The lonely, especially those convinced of their undesirability, find the lure of a beautiful other a painful reminder of deprivation. Whether we’re looking for a casual partner or a lifelong companion, most of us defer to our attractions despite considerable evidence that they can’t always be trusted. After all, attraction is often based on as little as one compelling feature, such as terrific breasts or a beguiling smile—hardly sufficient reason to pursue a potentially life-changing involvement. The attractions that stir you aren’t nearly as straightforward as they initially appear. When you feel an irresistible response to someone, your CET is probably being stimulated, although you may have no idea why this particular person is affecting you so strongly. Attractions that strike a deep inner chord do so because of a mysteriously complex and multidimensional psychic resonance. When you are strongly drawn to someone, do subtle clues and intuition allow you to perceive things about them that are normally hidden from view? Or is the object of your desire simply an appealing blank screen onto which you project a preexisting image from within yourself? In my view, strong attractions are a baffling mixture of heightened perception, fantasy projections, and pure chance—so thoroughly intermingled that no dependable method exists for sorting them out. No wonder some attractions work out well while others are disastrous. Sometimes what you think you see is precisely what you get. At other times you may feel shocked and betrayed to realize that you are involved with someone who is not at all the person you thought. Attraction is a meaningful toss of the dice, neither a rational choice nor mere happenstance. With luck, experience has taught you valuable lessons about how to manage your attractions so that they work for rather than against you. This is perhaps the most anyone can reasonably expect.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  much more than I do, but she thinks I’m just going through a phase. Margot’s gotten much nicer. She seems a lot different than she used to be. She’s not nearly as catty these days and is becoming a real friend. She no longer thinks of me as a litde kid who doesn’t count. It’s funny, but I can sometimes see myself as others see me. I take a leisurely look at the person called “Anne Frank” and browse through the pages of her life as though she were a stranger. Before I came here, when I didn’t think about things as much as I do now, I occasionally had the feeling that I didn’t belong to Momsy, Pim and Margot and that I would always be an outsider. I sometimes went around for six months at a time pretending I was an orphan. Then I’d chastise myself for playing the victim, when really, I’d always been so fortunate. After that I’d force myself to be friendly for a while. Every morning when I heard footsteps on the stairs, I hoped it would be Mother coming to say good morning. I’d greet her warmly, because I honesly did look forward to her affectionate glance. But then she’d snap at me for having made some comment or other (and I’d go off to school feeling completely discouraged. On the way home I’d make excuses for her, telling myself that she had so many worries. I’d arrive home in high spirits, chatting nineteen to the dozen, until the events of the morning would repeat themselves and I’d leave the room with my schoolbag in my hand and a pensive look on my face. Sometimes I’d decide to stay angry, but then I always had so much to talk about after school that I’d forget my resolution and want Mother to stop whatever she was doing and lend a willing ear. Then the time would come once more when I no longer listened for the steps on the stairs and felt lonely and cried into my pillow every night. Everything has gotten much worse here. But you already knew that. Now God has sent someone to help me: Peter. I fondle my pendant, press it to my lips and think, “What do I care! Petel is mine and nobody knows it!” With this in mind, I can rise above every nasty remark. Which of the people here would suspect that so much is going on in the mind of a teenage girl? SATURDAY, JANUARY 15, 1944

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  . . But there’s the catch. I’d like to live that seemingly carefree and happy life for an evening, a few days, a week. At the end of that week I’d be exhausted, and would be grateful to the first person to talk to me about something meaningful. I want friends, not admirers. Peo- ple who respect me for my character and my deeds, not my flattering smile. The circle around me would be much smaller, but what does that matter, as long as they’re sincere? In spite of everything, I wasn’t altogether happy in 1942; I often felt I’d been deserted, but because I was on the go all day long, I didn’t think about it. I enjoyed myself as much as I could, trying consciously or unconsciously to fill the void with jokes. Looking back, I realize that this period of my life has irrevocably come to a close; my happy-go-lucky, carefree schooldays are gone forever. I don’t even miss them. I’ve outgrown them. I can no longer just kid around, since my serious side is always there. I see my life up to New Year’s 1944 as if I were looking through a powerful magnifying glass. When I was at home, my life was filled with sunshine. Then, in the middle of 1942, everything changed overnight. The quarrels, the accusations -- I couldn’t take it all in. I was caught off guard, and the only way I knew to keep my bearings was to talk back. The first half of 1943 brought crying spells, loneliness and the gradual realization of my faults and short- comings, which were numerous and seemed even more so. I filled the day with chatter, tried to draw Pim closer to me and failed. This left me on my own to face the difficult task of improving myself so I wouldn’t have to hear their reproaches, because they made me so despondent. The second half of the year was slightly better. I became a teenager, and was treated more like a grown-up. I began to think about things and to write stories, finally coming to the conclusion that the others no longer had anything to do with me. They had no right to swing me back and forth like a pendulum on a clock. I wanted to change myself in my own way. I realized I could manage without my mother, completely and totally, and that hurt. But what affected me even more was the realization that I was never going to be able to confide in Father. I didn’t trust anyone but myself. After New Year’s the second big change occurred: my dream, through which I discovered my longing for . . . a boy; not for a girlfriend, but for a boyfriend. I also discovered an inner happiness underneath my superficial and cheerful exterior. From time to time I was quiet. Now I live only for Peter, since what happens to me in the future depends largely on him!

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  PITFALLS OF POWERLonging-based erotic scripts are by no means the only ones with the potential to turn against you. Regardless of the details that energize your CET, what makes your most exciting turn-ons so intense is that they soothe old wounds. Yet there’s always the risk your erotic scripts will create the very problems they’re trying to resolve, whether these problems originate within the family or within one’s peer group. Derrin: A need for control Tall and lanky, with closely cropped hair and a row of pens clipped to his shirt pocket, Derrin looked just like the “technophile” he pronounced himself to be. He had a very successful career as a computer systems engineer with an income well into six figures, the respect of colleagues, and the satisfaction of regular new challenges he felt confident about tackling. He had recently been hired to teach a college course in computer science and, much to his surprise, had become a popular instructor. Students admired his soft-spoken intelligence, and some looked to him as a mentor. Derrin wasn’t accustomed to such popularity. His own life as a student had combined academic success with a chronic sense of social failure and isolation. He told me of a recurring nightmare in which he’s running toward a train station to join his classmates for a field trip. In the distance everybody’s joking and jostling as they board the train. He struggles to run faster but his legs feel like lead. He reaches the train just as the doors close and it pulls out. As the windows pass by, a few kids make silly faces at him but most are having too much fun to notice. “All my life,” he lamented, “I’ve been the odd man out.” The only child of a fairly normal family, Derrin was consistently praised for his scholastic achievements. He liked school because he did well, but he also hated it because of his isolation there. With the onset of puberty he felt more than ever like the outsider. He often eavesdropped as other guys traded stories of their sexual exploits yet avoided school parties and dances, retreating instead into his studies. One day he discovered his father’s collection of sexy magazines stashed in the garage, and later in his room he pored over them. Sure he knew the basic facts about sex, but he had never felt such overwhelming sensations or such a compelling urge to touch himself. He had his first ejaculation that night—actually four or five over the course of several hours. Thereafter he developed an active fantasy life populated by lusty women eager to satisfy his every demand. Meanwhile his relationships with real women remained distant and awkward. The ones he found most appealing wouldn’t give him the time of day. But not in his fantasies. One day Derrin handed me a written copy of his most exciting one, which clearly revealed his creative formula for turning the tables:

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Now I’d like to turn to the chapter “Father and Mother Don’t Understand Me.” My parents have always spoiled me rotten, treated me kindly, defended me against the van Daans and done all that parents can. And yet for the longest time I’ve felt extremely lonely, left out, neglected and misunderstood. Father did everything he could to curb my rebellious spirit, but it was no use. I’ve cured myself by holding my behavior up to the light and looking at what I was doing wrong. Why didn’t Father support me in my struggle? Why did he fall short when he tried to offer me a helping hand? The answer is: he used the wrong methods. He always talked to me as if I were a child going through a difficult phase. It sounds crazy, since Father’s the only one who’s given me a sense of confidence and made me feel as if I’m a sensible person. But he overlooked one thing: he failed to see that this struggle to triumph over my difficulties was more important to me than anything else. I didn’t want to hear about “typical adolescent problems,” or “other girls,” or “you’ll grow out of it.” I didn’t want to be treated the same as all-the-other-girls, but as Anne-in-her-own-right, and rim didn’t understand that. Besides, I can’t confide in anyone unless they tell me a lot about themselves, and because I know very little about him, I can’t get on a more intimate footing. rim always acts like the elderly father who once had the same fleeting im-pulses, but who can no longer relate to me as a friend, no matter how hard he tries. As a result, I’ve never shared my outlook on life or my long-pondered theories with anyone but my diary and, once in a while, Margot. I’ve hid anything having to do with me from Father, never shared my ideals with him, deliberately alienated myself from him. I couldn’t have done it any other way. I’ve let myself be guided entirely by my feelings. It was egotistical, but I’ve done what was best for my own peace of mind. I would lose that, plus the self-confidence I’ve worked so hard to achieve, if I were to be subjected to criticism halfway through the job. It may sound hard-hearted, but I can’t take criticism from rim either, because not only do I never share my innermost thoughts with him, but I’ve pushed him even further away by being irritable. This is a point I think about quite often: why is it that rim annoys me so much sometimes? I can hardly bear to have him tutor me, and his affection seems forced. I want to be left alone, and I’d rather he ignored me for a while until I’m more sure of myself when I’m talking to him! I’m still torn with guilt about the mean letter I wrote him when I was so upset.