invisible

I came out of helping with the church services in a retirement care home to find my mom reading Invisible Man, which we are reading in English. She said,
"Being invisible is worse than being hated or denegrated. It's worse than anything, because it's almost as if you are not there."
I noticed she said 'you.'
"You're not invisible, Mom," I said.
"But I feel like I am," she said. "If someone shouts in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, is there really a noise?"
"Yes, yes there's a noise."
"But how can you say that?" she asked, and she wasn't really talking to me, even though it was only me in the car.
"Because there is an objective, scientific truth, that there is noise. Truth isn't just subjectivity."
"But if nobody is there to hear it..."
"I don't know what to tell you."
"It just feels like I don't make a difference in the world. Not just in your life, but everywhere."
"I've told you over and over that you make a difference in my life."
"What if there's nobody in the forest to hear you shout, but shouting is your only hope of feeling visible?"

In that moment the possibility of letting go of my prejudices and anger and completely understanding my mother came about. It was as if a screen was ripped away, because I knew exactly how she felt, and I could empathize, but at the same time I was angry with her for telling me those things, because everyone feels like that, and why tell me if nothing I say can make her feel any differently? It was just such a weird moment. I was thinking, then you're screwed, but I obviously couldn't say it. And then she said,
"But you know, you're not responsible for the way I feel. I choose how I respond to your actions."
I know I'm not responsible. I know my mom knows that to. But sometimes it seems like the unspoken parts of these conversations consist of, It's your fault I feel invisible, Lindsay, which made me defensive and less empathetic.

I'm feeling very oddly nostalgic. I found a lot of old letters in my room yesterday from middle school and ninth grade when things were so terrible. They were letters with Kayte and Shauna and Siobhan, and all of the terrible necessity of those days came back.

So I'm feeling like reading or watching The Hours. But since I won't be able to do that until tomorrow, since I can't go to the store on Sunday and I don't own the book or movie, I'll quote bits of it from Wikiquote:

Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of these terrible times again and I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices and can't concentrate. So I'm doing what seems to be the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I know that I'm spoiling your life and without me you could work, and you will, I know. You see, I can't even write this properly. What I want to say is that I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me. And incredibly good. Everything is gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

A woman's whole life in a single day. Just one day. And in that day her whole life.

Did it matter, then, she asked herself, walking toward Bond Street. Did it matter that she must inevitably cease, completely. All this must go on without her. Did she resent it? Or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? It is possible to die. It is possible to die.

If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too. This is my right; it is the right of every human being.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more. It's contrast.

To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours.

There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life.

That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.

I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.

I wanted to be a writer, that's all. I wanted to write about it all. Everything that happens in a moment. The way the flowers looked when you carried them in your arms. This towel, how it smells, how it feels, this thread. All our feelings, yours and mine. The history of it, who we once were. Everything in the world. Everything all mixed up, like it's all mixed up now. And I failed. I failed. No matter what you start with it ends up being so much less. Sheer f-ing pride and stupidity.

I especially love the second to last one.
Michael Cunningham is AMAZING! And whoever wrote/directed the movie.

I'm feeling really weird right now if you can't tell.