Here’s a little section from my Esther Greenwood part of the collection;
June 28th, 1953
How do you even begin to talk about something like this? The way I’m feeling is completely indescribable. But it is certainly real. It is a consuming emptiness that no one can fill. No man, no girlfriend, no mother nor father can melt the cold. I’m allowed to control my emotions, everyone tells me that, but this is something that I don’t want to control because I think it could be my escape.
The words, the paper, the ink, it all comes together to create a big long story which I vomit my soul upon. I feel like someone is going to capture this diary when I’m gone and spread it into the world in a fit of furious laughter. Their scorn.
Besides that point, my mother is unbearable to me.
“Why won’t you smile Esther? Your smile is so pretty.”
Why don’t you leave me alone, Mother? Your absence is so thrilling.
She doesn’t understand the world or me. My first published story said it all, A Reasonable Life in a Mad World.
Not everyone is happy and some people like it that way. The world is a mesmerising place, yes of course, but we don’t all have to be mesmerising people.
I know that I am not. My writing is mediocre. I’d won that fashion magazine contest. Seventeen published my work and then Harper’s and even Mademoiselle. Congratulations Esther, here’s to the time of your life! But, I do not want to go. Don’t make me, don’t make me do this. Please.
July 3rd, 1953
New York City is a place where only certain amounts of light can shine so bright through the constant darkness. Central Park has become my solitude. My stay at the Park Central Hotel does not begin for another week and Central Park helps me distance the future from the present. I went for a walk through there this morning, right around near the boathouse. Probably the most beautiful place in all of New York City, in all of Central Park and I could only understand why every single woman wanted to get married there. I stopped only to gaze at an unusual person, always on their own, in the distance, wondering why, perhaps, they chose to come here of all places on this particular morning.
I stepped past a man who sat on the grass, legs crossed, quite unusual for a man of his age, 45 odd, I’d gathered, and the hem on his grey, pinstriped pants was hoisted far above his ankles. He sat on the grass eating an ice cream cone, his tongue swirling around the glossy blob, eyes closed, savouring the taste, like a small child. I looked past the top of his salt and pepper hair, peering at the ice-cream stand in the distance. I made a start for it.
I asked the man behind the stall for a small chocolate cone and then went and sat, similarly to the man, on the other side of the park. The blob glided across my tongue, offering me a part of itself so willingly every single time. I got up, left the park, walked back past the duck pond to my temporary home and crawled into bed. I wrote some poetry later, not really about anything in particular. My writing doesn’t seem to have an ongoing theme, which I suppose could be considered a good thing, an artistic thing. But, the writing really does make me feel better. It’s like writing in this journal, in a way. Using words as an attempt to penetrate my indecision into something coherent. Aside from that, I had some toast with a little bit of peanut butter and turned the radio on.
Once I get you up here, I’ll be holding you so near,
You may hear all the angels cheer ‘cause we’re together…
let’s fly, let’s fly away…
With the soothing voice and taunting lyrics of Sinatra, my frenemy, I crawled back into bed, closed my eyes, and allowed the darkness to overwhelm my conscious.
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