"There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour."
--Sylvia Plath, 'The Bell Jar'
It's the loneliest feeling in the world to find yourself standing up when everyone else is sitting down. To have everybody look at you and say, "What's the matter with her?" I know what it feels like walking down an empty street, listening to the sound of your own footsteps, shutters closed, blinds drawn, doors locked against you. And you aren't sure whether you're walking toward something, or if you're just walking away.
It was something else. What? I don't know, exactly. She seemed to be inside something, inside herself, as if all that beauty had been made in her as this big hall full of chandeliers and marble fireplaces--beautiful but empty. And she'd been dropped down in the middle of it and had spent too many years wandering around in it, her footsteps just echoing inside herself, wondering if anyone else was there, wondering how she'd got there, telling herself that if she had to be alone in there, at least she had interesting things to look at. Only she didn't want to be alone in there, and since she was never going to find her way out, someone would have to find his way in. I knew all of that, and it took about ten seconds to figure it out. And it took another ten to figure out that I wanted to be the one to push open those heavy doors and wander those empty halls calling her name until I found her. But how do you do that when you aren't really in a great hall but only a bookstore, and you don't even know her name, and your gum has made your lips turn green?
--Sylvia Plath, 'The Bell Jar'
It's the loneliest feeling in the world to find yourself standing up when everyone else is sitting down. To have everybody look at you and say, "What's the matter with her?" I know what it feels like walking down an empty street, listening to the sound of your own footsteps, shutters closed, blinds drawn, doors locked against you. And you aren't sure whether you're walking toward something, or if you're just walking away.
It was something else. What? I don't know, exactly. She seemed to be inside something, inside herself, as if all that beauty had been made in her as this big hall full of chandeliers and marble fireplaces--beautiful but empty. And she'd been dropped down in the middle of it and had spent too many years wandering around in it, her footsteps just echoing inside herself, wondering if anyone else was there, wondering how she'd got there, telling herself that if she had to be alone in there, at least she had interesting things to look at. Only she didn't want to be alone in there, and since she was never going to find her way out, someone would have to find his way in. I knew all of that, and it took about ten seconds to figure it out. And it took another ten to figure out that I wanted to be the one to push open those heavy doors and wander those empty halls calling her name until I found her. But how do you do that when you aren't really in a great hall but only a bookstore, and you don't even know her name, and your gum has made your lips turn green?
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