What does not feel like home—
Noise.
Crowds that I can’t get away from. Even several extroverts, or one, someone with frantic energy, someone who keeps me from my thoughts.
I remember visiting a lovely farm in Wisconsin (maybe Appleton, which sounds like orchards and a rural air), and getting to spend time with people who welcomed me, and dogs and horses, and to sleep in a converted barn—all those things that appeal to me. I probably ate berries, cobbler or crumble, and other summer things. A child’s delight. But the family had seven children, and each of them friends, and there were just too many people around all the time for me, the only child. Despite the horses and the many other pleasures I lived only for the moment when the lights would go out and I’d finally be alone, just me, able to find myself inside my head. Able to find myself again, not having to talk, respond, and in that vanish, anymore. Able to be me.
“Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.”
—Charlotte Eriksson
image: Umbrellas in the Rain, Maurice
Prendergast, 1899
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment