5:30 PM – Tues Oct 4 – 82
Lost my diary in all the room changing so this will have to do. Conv w/ M & D who seem to be realizing The Curse is lifted – they said I'd be a failure if I lived my own way and I’m not, also I’d be lonely and I’m not. I have to commit myself to this house and its scary. Were here for God Knows How Long. T says I have to Act Like I Own It and make believe I own it. Change my attitude and presto! I argue we are caretakers. Worry about T’s denial. At least our new study is beautiful. With a fold down couch it can be converted to a guest room. I am relying on working there to get me out of a dead patch. Just finished reading the Marycliff College catalog – little Sisters of Mercy college run by adventuresome nuns where Dr James teaches. I want to take everything. Move my Fordham “credit” over. I need to find someone whose arms I can fall into sobbing. There’s got to be someone! I hunger to write about ordinary people but who are they? Don’t want to be cynical. Tried explaining my religious feeling to T – he is utterly uncomprehending. When I ask for support he says “I can’t lie to you.” I feel he would be prouder of me as a low level editor at a publishing firm on the verge of collapse than being who I am and doing what I’m doing. In the absence of support I write letters. Good letter from Pansy – perhaps she will be my correspondent. Then clean. Good! I am strong again! 11 AM Wed 6 Oct 82 Unfortunately T is very slow. I cycle through all the changes much more rapidly than he does. Except getting over a fight. That takes me longer patiently building my house of cards once again. I’ve given up trying to get him to see that working with his Mom and having her for a landlord is a terrible idea. He just starts berating himself and its downhill from there. Tell him its not the poverty – I have groceries, a roof over my head and 20 hrs childcare a week. Panic attacks to be avoided: they are immobilizing. I almost regret sitting down – waves of exhaustion sweep over me. 9:45 AM 7 Oct 82 I don’t have dark nights of the soul: for me its dark mornings. Can’t imagine working on Issue of Blood. Not until it “lives” inside me. So sending out typing cards to lawyers etc praying they respond. Seeking a modus vivendi. Eliz. Friar Wms spoke truth when she said overeaters overeat IN ORDER TO FOCUS THEIR ANXIETY. Women in particular suffer from endless onslaughts of untackle-able anxiety. It just comes at you from everywhere. “Restraint” and “constraint” as the major female virtues overwhelm everybody. Facilitate others. My gift for writing saved me. 11 PM– 2 glasses of wine with dinner is one glass too many. Makes me long for sugar. T & I combat this with sex. Then wasted an evening reading Agatha Christie’s play Verdict – should have been a Westmacott – one of those “what if” ideas. Then a book on addictive drinking which was somewhat more help. Says when you take away the crutch you are going to fall down. House still disrupted – tomorrow I’m really going to finish. Take it one day at a time trying to get all the richness out. Unbroken trains of thought – and love – are what I most value. Now that Shane is older he’s less of a savage – we’re starting to have meals as a family. Expect my life to revolve around kids till I’m 50 – then I can have my next crisis! 9;00 AM Sun 10 Oct 82 Baby asleep after a bottle. After a very successful dinner party last night complete with blueberry muffins, too much wine & cheesecake I’m back on my diet. We enjoyed the Goldbergs so much and intend to invite them to the farm. T. treats me a little strangely in company – talking about how sexy I was as a teenager. Almost as if there isn’t anything to say about me now. House finally clean and orderly except for the kitchen which I can do today. January is so close – S 14mos old – I will take only 1 class so I can “sniff around” and “get the feel”. Tomorrow I get to restart my novel. Not writing causes depression. 1 pm Mon 11 oct 82 It’s freezing but my cold is in it last stages so the hell with it. T will connect up the heating tonight. Feeling happy & fulfilled. This is the place I wanted to be in a week ago. Sat at my desk for a long time this AM smoking a cigar and thinking about my novel. It’s going to be good. Idea # 1: “The choice of a husband is the choice of a self.” Create something new from the rubble of a dead tradition. Problem #1 was reading dreck. Don’t do it even when editors encourage. Reading Raymond Chandler instead – now there’s a writer. He wanted to write about corruption which he despised – put him in a permanent quandary. I want to write about sex & families. Feeling rejected by the male/female nexus, longing for it, defensive of it all at once. Need to let my agent go – she is doing nothing for me. Actually enjoyed Eladell’s Lion in the Way even though it shirked every one of its fences. 4 PM – Sweet baby asleep after vigorous morning’s play. I got a 20 min nap too. Control my time: plan to sit at my desk after T & S leave for swim class. M & D attack the idea of a Catholic college – I say all roads lead one place only – to the meaning & purpose of existence. The baby & I will bicycle to the store as soon as he wakes up _ I swear its warmer outside than in. Then play & dinner – must eat early because of swim class. Thinking about Shirley Jackson – how would she have evolved if a steady diet of coffee, cigarettes, brownies & phobias hadn’t killed her?
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3 Aug 82
Back from the Berkshires to find 1 rejected MSS already. My typewriter broke down & Jacobus brought me his machine. Called IBM repairman. Jacobus left me with wrong typing ball & had to come back. T & L hanging up on each other. The sooner I can separate those two the better. Poor T looks back on Kentucky as “the golden days.” I really want this marriage to be a success but I think I should stop offering advice. There are so many things that he can do. Can’t forget how mad he got when I arranged a dinner with Dad’s lawyer assuming they could have a frank talk about the possibilities in the legal world and T embarrassed me by bouncing ragefully off the walls! “You set me up!” Back to Jacobus. The sooner he’s done the better I feel. The $4500 already gone. 3:30 PM Wed 4 Aug 82 Baby seems happy with blueberries & tray so after 1 hr Jacobus (IBM repairman a no-show) 1 hr housework and ½ hr nap I snatch a moment to write here. T and I stuck in a doomful crawl while I throw out ideas he then rejects. Lois taking a $30,000 second mortgage on her house to add to the $90,000 they hope to borrow on this place to get things moving. T talks of hiring a secretary while I need a job but L won’t hire me. My mental drains are backed up from the bad reviews poor Plath’s Journals are getting – this is a feminism sourcebook! The best revenge is living AT ALL (she would be 50 this year) by dying she placed herself in their power. Like Chatterton, she thought the twanging of her own desperation was the world’s machinery. She thought what she wanted was to be a “success” when what she really wanted was to stop being herself. The only freedom is in a concept of God. Seeing past the universe. God gives us permission just to Be. Why was I touched and she was not? Sat 7 Aug 82 Finished Jacobus’ work in a flat out hair raising push – now he’s silent. He always does this. Use my nervous energy on housecleaning, then iron to War & Peace. I can hear Mom thinning her lips to say “Life is real & life is earnest” – her favorite quote. Most people think she has the ideal life – she sees herself as performing an endless string of menial tasks for her family. T. offered to take some of the work off my shoulders – gave him a criminology thesis to type. 8/8/82 Jacobus has 2-3 more “lots”. His charts take forever! Alas, typing consumes all my writing time. Baby asleep 11/2 hrs! I dare not even flush the johns. Jacobus driving me off my onion – he rattles dictation like a bren gun. Jacobus’ transcriber broke and he’s getting me a new once – hope that slows things down a bit. Reading Jerome Goldstein’s In Business for Yourself. I agree with J. Granville that the stock mkt is going to get worse. Unreadable Georgette Heyer – endless sly preaching about Unwashed Them vs Us. A woman called in answer to my card – she’s published “2 Regencies” and nothing since then! Wanted to see a copy of my Tarnished Vows outline! I had to laugh – we’re all in this together. 1:40 PM Fri 13 Aug 82 I abandoned cranky Shane yelling upstairs – he needs a nap. He doesn’t agree. Walks his crib across floor and almost downstairs! Wrote for an application to an infant childcare center in W Windsor. Reading Louise Bernikov’s very good Between Women. Trying to get T to calculate what it actually costs to live here when he says we can’t afford to move. I think there are a lot of hidden costs. Imagining what would happen if our situations were flipped. He would be angry & threatening. Sat 14 Aug 82 Difficult anniversary dinner with couple whose wedding we attended last summer. They seem to have plenty of money – cars, houses, trips – just hearing about it is depressing. T made comment at one point that I “improve on the truth” I had to tackle him over it. I love Toss but am feeling immensely sad just now. Feel like I’m living I Dostoevsky’s Poor Folk. My uterus hurting when I sit down – I see how easy it would be to disappear into hypochondria. Luckily I am enjoying V. Sackville-West’s Pepita– worthy to stand by The Grande Mademoiselle. |
Alysse Aallyn
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