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Apr. 26th, 2006 04:30 pmIt's like claustrophobia, this feeling that your life is somehow too full -- too many old presences, too many shadows bowing over your head. Too many stacks of clothes and books and unanswered letters threatening to topple inward, too late to worry about whether something precious might be lost when you throw it all out.
Or it's like being in a group of children each needing something from you -- food, attention, warm blankets, love -- and beyond all their grasping hands and the sound of tearing fabric as they drag you down you can see the ones silent in the corner, needing you so badly they're beyond any power to call your name, and you can't save them any more than you can save yourself.
It's like being inside and outside of yourself at once, prisoner and keeper, lover and beloved, curse and victim, suffering your pain in one mind and the infuriating melodrama of yourself in the other, bound face to face, breathing your own trapped breath rank with terror and hatred. There's nothing you can do to stop it, nothing to end forever, nothing except...
"Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!"
The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world. The worst thing isn't knowing you'd sell your soul to set yourself free. The worst thing is knowing you can't.
Or it's like being in a group of children each needing something from you -- food, attention, warm blankets, love -- and beyond all their grasping hands and the sound of tearing fabric as they drag you down you can see the ones silent in the corner, needing you so badly they're beyond any power to call your name, and you can't save them any more than you can save yourself.
It's like being inside and outside of yourself at once, prisoner and keeper, lover and beloved, curse and victim, suffering your pain in one mind and the infuriating melodrama of yourself in the other, bound face to face, breathing your own trapped breath rank with terror and hatred. There's nothing you can do to stop it, nothing to end forever, nothing except...
"Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!"
The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world. The worst thing isn't knowing you'd sell your soul to set yourself free. The worst thing is knowing you can't.
