A Hill and Books
On that small hill, where time pauses in reverence for serenity and calm, tranquility flows amidst the silence of the place, and worries drift away through the narrow paths, reaching the realm of oblivion. In this land, there is no sorrow, no clamor—only you and your self, where your memory is what most betrays your peace and disturbs your ease.
In high school, my relationship with this place deepened. I abandoned the prescribed textbooks and created my own curriculum to read beside it. You might be surprised by this and ask, “What madness has she reached?” I will tell you: I did not like the prescribed curriculum, so I chose, in its place, books of literature, principles of jurisprudence, and some history books. I attached my mind to other cultures and religions, and I traveled to distant lands through the pages. In secret, I lived among the minds of poets and geniuses. When I emerged among people, I emerged as that girl whom they still believe is merely a name in the records of the psychiatric hospital. If my skills compelled them to seek 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 it by saying I delved into topics that should not be discussed. So tell them: I do not force them to sit with me, nor do I have any desire to keep them company in the first place, because I nearly lose myself among them. They come, and I witness behaviors that exhaust me, so I return to my isolation with a peaceful heart, for I have realized—certainly—that I have missed nothing. People are still as they are: merely an ear that listens to what they are accustomed to, not to the truth. They reduce you to what they have heard about you and treat it as an absolute truth. They have become as if they are dealing with a hazy entity that must be approached with caution. A single session with them was enough to spill my hope of feeling like a normal girl, a girl who has the right to be treated as a sensitive human being deserving of respect, not to be feared as if she had committed a crime in the past!
In my isolation, I refill what has been spilled from me. I do not know why this insistence that I will spend a lifetime in the corridors of marginalization! I chose silence and withdrew into the shade, until God decrees what is to be done. In my seclusion, I read a lot, drew a lot, reflected on the lives of the great, and read every psychology book that fell into my hands. I was searching for myself among them, hoping to find a diagnosis that would bring me relief. I wondered: Am I really just a dreamer’s mind, living in a reality that cannot sustain her dream? Or is there more to my story?
