29 December 2004
3:41 PM
Someone once said that it's so much easier to run. Be numb.. But I think that complete numbness feels like someone took your heart away, and you don't know when you'll get it back. Why let yourself die on the problem. Unless the problem will never resolve?
We spin our own webs of misery, we lead ourselves by the hand into sadness, and yet, we blame the idiosyncrasies of people around us.
Someone else told me that there are only two ways to push people. You can push them around, or you can push them away. I wonder which is worse..
I borrowed the collected poems of Emily Dickinson. Her style is pretty bleak. Mum says I shouldn't read poems from people who lived exclusively in her own home, almost throughout her whole life, but somehow it's her very eccentricity that makes her so successful.
I measure every Grief I meet
With narrow, probing, Eyes--
I wonder if It weighs like Mine--
Or has an Easier size.
I wonder if They bore it long--
Or did it just begin--
I could not tell the Date of Mine--
It feels so old a pain--
I wonder if it hurts to live--
And if They have to try--
And whether--could They choose between--
It would not be--to die--
I note that Some--gone patient long--
At length, renew their smile--
An imitation of a Light
That has so little Oil--
I wonder if when Years have piled--
Some Thousands--on the Harm--
That hurt them early--such a lapse
Could give them any Balm--
Or would they go on aching still
Through Centuries of Nerve--
Enlightened to a larger Pain--
In Contrast with the Love--
The Grieved--are many--I am told--
There is the various Cause--
Death--is but one-- and comes but once--
And only nails the eyes--
There's Grief of Want--and grief of Cold--
A sort they call "Despair"--
There's Banishment from native Eyes--
In Sight of Native Air--
And though I may not guess the kind--
Correctly--yet to me
A piercing Comfort it affords
In passing Calvary--
To note the fashions-- of the Cross--
And how they're mostly worn--
Still fascinated to presume
That Some-- are like My Own --
Emily Dickinson
