The Story of Mary MacLane/March 12
EVERYTHING is so dreary—so dreary.
I feel as if I would like to die to-day. I should not be the tiniest bit less unhappy afterward—but this life is unutterably weary. I am not strong. I can not bear things. I do not want to bear things. I do not long for strength. I want to be happy.
When I was very little, it was cold and dreary also, but I was certain it would be different when I should grow and be ten years old. It must be very nice to be ten, I thought,—and one would not be nearly so lonesome. But when the years passed and I was ten it was just exactly as lonesome. And when I was ten everything was very hard to understand.
But it will surely be different when I am seventeen, I said. I will know so much when I am seventeen. But when I was seventeen it was even more lonely, and everything was still harder to understand.
And again I said—faintly—everything will become clearer in a few years more, and I will wonder to think how stupid I have always been. But now the few years more have gone and here I am in loneliness that is more hopeless and harder to bear than when I was very little. Still, I wonder indeed to think how stupid I have been—and now I am not so stupid. I do not tell myself that it will be different when I am five-and-twenty.
For I know that it will not be different.
I know that it will be the same dreariness, the same Nothingness, the same loneliness.
It is very, very lonely.
It is hope deferred and maketh the heart sick.
It is more than I can bear.
Why—why was I ever born!
I can not live, and I can not die—for what is there after I am dead? I can see myself wandering in dark and lonely places.
Yet I feel as if I would like to die to-day.