Hills and Books
On that small hill, where time stands still in reverence for tranquility and calm, reassurance flows amidst the silence of the place, and worries drift away through the narrow paths, reaching the periphery of oblivion. In this land, there is no turbidity, no clamor—only you and yourself. Here, your memory betrays your peace of mind more than anything else, and your sense of ease is disturbed more than anything else!
In high school, my relationship with him deepened. I abandoned the prescribed curriculum and created my own private syllabus to study alongside him. You might be surprised by this statement and ask: “What kind of madness has this reached?” I will tell you that I did not care for the official curriculum, so I chose, instead, books of literature, principles of jurisprudence, and some historical texts. I attached my mind to other cultures and religions, and I traveled to distant lands through pages. In secret, I lived among the minds of poets and geniuses. When I emerged among people, I was still that girl whom they believed was merely a name in the asylum’s records. If my skills compelled them to ask for my help in drawing, I saw caution in their dealings with me. I read the mothers’ fear of my negative influence on their daughters. They justified this by claiming that I engaged in conversations that should not be broached. So they told their daughters: I do not force them to sit with me, nor do I even have a desire to keep them company, because I nearly lose myself among them. They come, and I observe behaviors that exhaust me, so I return to my solitude with a tranquil heart, because I firmly realized that I had not missed out on anything; people remain as they are—just ears that listen to what they are accustomed to, not to the truth. They reduce you to what they have heard about you and treat you as if it were pure fact. They seem to treat you as if you were a vague entity that must be approached with caution. A single session with them was enough to pour out my hope of ever feeling like a normal girl, a girl who deserves to be treated as a sensitive human being worthy of respect, rather than being shunned as if she were a former criminal!
In my solitude, I refilled what had been spilled from me. I do not know why there is such insistence that I will spend a lifetime in the corridors of marginalization! I chose silence and withdrew into the shadows, until God decrees what must be done. In my seclusion, I read extensively, drew often, contemplated the lives of the great, and read every book on psychology that fell into my hands. I searched for myself within them, hoping to find a diagnosis that would bring me peace. I would ask myself: Am I truly just a dreamy mind, living in a reality that cannot support her dreams? Or does my story have a continuation?
