I prefer my best friend Solitude
Who lets me be me--
Scream if I want
Dream if I want.
I just found that in my adolescent diary. I was in Class 7 and I wrote it after some silly tiff with my then best friend P. Class 7, I think, was when I became conscious of the differences. When I started acknowledging that behind the facade of model student, I was really empty. Seventh was when I realised that come to think of it, I didn't really have ANYTHING in common with any of my friends.
Mom blamed it all on the books I was reading. She thought I was becoming extremely precocious and a big-time intellectual snob. Looking back, I agree with her. Everybody was into Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys and there I was reading Somerset Maughm and Thomas Hardy.
Just reading all those books did something to me. It twisted me, I think. I soaked in the words and lived the lives I read of. Maybe, if I'd been older and thicker skinned from real experience, a bit wiser, a bit more aware of the fact that what I was reading was a story after all, maybe then, those vicarious experiences would have been put aside.
But not having lived life long enough, those experiences, vicarious though they were, and only imperfectly understood, became part of me. The more I read, the less I related with my peers.
Seventh was also the time when A and me had huge fights cos I preferred hanging out with her friends rather than mine...and most of all seventh was when I realised that the word for someone like me was 'misfit'. It was a hard, cold truth but in school and college one learns to live with those facts.
By the time I came to class 11, I pretended to be like everybody else. I did that for the next seven years of my life. And then, when I had finished studies, going to work was liberating! At last I was with people who had similar inclinations! I could be myself and there wouldn't be any peers against whom I'd constantly measure myself and ask--" Why can't I be happy and lively and...free like them? Why do I feel like everything is a pretense?"
Yes, I definitely prefer my work life to school or college. Thankfully, all my jobs have been with really nice people. But in spite of all that, sometimes, the silence gets so loud. Solitude is still my best friend.
Who lets me be me--
Scream if I want
Dream if I want.
I just found that in my adolescent diary. I was in Class 7 and I wrote it after some silly tiff with my then best friend P. Class 7, I think, was when I became conscious of the differences. When I started acknowledging that behind the facade of model student, I was really empty. Seventh was when I realised that come to think of it, I didn't really have ANYTHING in common with any of my friends.
Mom blamed it all on the books I was reading. She thought I was becoming extremely precocious and a big-time intellectual snob. Looking back, I agree with her. Everybody was into Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys and there I was reading Somerset Maughm and Thomas Hardy.
Just reading all those books did something to me. It twisted me, I think. I soaked in the words and lived the lives I read of. Maybe, if I'd been older and thicker skinned from real experience, a bit wiser, a bit more aware of the fact that what I was reading was a story after all, maybe then, those vicarious experiences would have been put aside.
But not having lived life long enough, those experiences, vicarious though they were, and only imperfectly understood, became part of me. The more I read, the less I related with my peers.
Seventh was also the time when A and me had huge fights cos I preferred hanging out with her friends rather than mine...and most of all seventh was when I realised that the word for someone like me was 'misfit'. It was a hard, cold truth but in school and college one learns to live with those facts.
By the time I came to class 11, I pretended to be like everybody else. I did that for the next seven years of my life. And then, when I had finished studies, going to work was liberating! At last I was with people who had similar inclinations! I could be myself and there wouldn't be any peers against whom I'd constantly measure myself and ask--" Why can't I be happy and lively and...free like them? Why do I feel like everything is a pretense?"
Yes, I definitely prefer my work life to school or college. Thankfully, all my jobs have been with really nice people. But in spite of all that, sometimes, the silence gets so loud. Solitude is still my best friend.
posted by Rapunzel at 10:26 pm
23 Comments:
Well, I lost my fights long ago,
When you replied with every echo,
Every cry I have had since then,
Has you all over, on layers laden.
Screaming out of every pore,
Talking in my head, ever more,
Every madness of mine that is left,
Will end in you, O Silence bereft.
Heh, Scout. I wrote something about solitude too :-). Missed reading you. Glad to have you back.
except that i was never the model student type ... hmmm. reminds me of the time when in some kiddie picnic, as a kid, i got questioned by a (very) grown up abt why i was sitting alone and looking at the water, and i said, no company is better than bad company. i was still naive (or dumb) enough to not have realised that i was saying something offensive abt all those people in their faces, but i knew that even then, in my pigtails. funny kid i was. but atleast i was 'in ur face weird' and 'this is what i am' ... around class 11 i started making a few 'friends' and liking it ... and then i changed the covers ... started fitting in
:)
austere
like this post... probably coz I could relate with it... only difference is that my solititude didn't come coz of books. I never read them.
I don't really know where it came from. Can a person be born with it?
I look within, and all I see is anger... a little deeper... and its all calm.... silent...
Strange... huh
hmm...identify with it.. :)..
solitude was my friend earlier..but later it was more of "uniqueness in a crowd" who was my friend :p :)
FR-exactement!
MADDIE-i read. i commented :)only there is not even the smattering of a him anywhere in mine.lol.hims are so TOTALLY OUT!
btw, do u mind me being demonstrative??VERY demonstrative??
PRERONA-my suspicion is that i was in ur face weird too. but being the model student...people were willing to overlook it. as long as i helped people out and allowed them to copy my answers and homework, i could be as weird as i wanted to be.
AUSTY- :-D
CONMAN-yes, i guess u can be born with it....books was only later when i could read....until then it was personality disorder
http://rapunzels-dream.blogspot.com/2005/05/part-1-personality-disorder.html
i shall write part 2 3 and 4 some day and u'll feel better abt urself.
TWILIGHT-yeah baby!i am unique too!so is everybody else around me:p
hahahahahaha... LOL... better about myself????? LOL... you're hillarious man...
Listen dude... I LOVE myself.
So take a walk...
:)...different is good..
not fair :(
Go ahead. Call me Atticus if you want to :)).
maddie, rupunzel ... what what what! i smell a secret :)
CONMAN-lol.alright i shall never disagree with you. you ARE weird.amen and amen!!
KUNAL-different...ummmmm....
PRERONA-what isnt??that i cud be as weird as i wanted or that i let them copy answers??:p for the latter, i got caught btw.very unpleasant episode it was.
maddie-awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.......atticus!
PRERONA-no secrets prerona!but we jus like to pretend there is and plant 'glues' all over the place:)
that u could be weird and get away with it.
and yeah - sure i blv u, girl!
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