No looking back

 

 

 

Depression, despair, and misery swept over me quite frequently in

the early months. It struck around the hour of the dawn chorus.

Sleep was impossible. Eventually, however, I did find some good

ways of combating it. Thought control at night was essential; simply

not allowing your thoughts to stray into depressing areas. I made

literary problems for myself to work out. I pondered upon what Miss

Haversham would have done with her life if she had not decided to

spend it in one dark and cobwebby room? Or, had she lived now,

would Lady Bartram have risen from her sofa to raise money for the

Conservative Party, or NSPCC or rather, in her case, for the RSPCA?

That sort of thing. Sewing is soothing at 3.15am and with the World

Service and a cup of tea quite an enjoyable way of spending the

night. My sewing abilities are non-existent, but I made an attempt to

master easy patchwork, and now tablecloths and several cushions

stitched in the early hours. My sister gave me some tapes of Peggy

Ashcroft reading four Katherine Mansfield short stories. These were

wonderfully sleep-inducing. 

 

Early on I learnt far the most crucial and important lesson. I could

not doubt my decision to change my life. Much careful thought,

much agony had been gone through to arrive at that decision. Having

found the nerve or courage to swop a protected married life for a

solitary single one in which there were a mass of new worries

besides quite a difference in material things, I had to keep believing I

had done the right thing. There could be absolutely no looking back.

Nietzsche said: “What does not destroy me, makes me stronger”. I

began to understand the wisdom of his words. I was not destroyed. I

grew stronger every day.

 

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