After being in a mental asylum, help captive for sixty years, you begin to question everything. So much is taken away from you, your days, the meals the bathing, the activities, the therapy, everything is planned and decided for you. You are left powerless living an empty and soulless life. For we are just vessels that identities passes through every fad, trend hairstyle, we change and grow with the days, and who would have identity without control.
In The Disappearance of Esme Lennox, we watch Esme come out of the Couldestone asylum and begin to establish who she is as a person, much like a child maturing and discovering itself. Every human being is so uniquely different and that difference gives us our identity. It all comes back to your choices for even as we hurt and love and live in the same ways the little choices and mistakes we experience make and break us, as humans and individuals.
Making a choice may seem as difficult and confusing as ever but having no choice whatsoever is entirely more maddening and difficult. We wonder what has become of the sunken old man in the retirement home who screams whenever the blanket at the foot of his bed is moved. Or the woman who must have her food arranged in a certain way or she won’t eat. It is the little bits of control they have left being exercising in desperate attempts to finally have a say in their lives.
Living in a bold and shameless world we forget what the passing jeans trend means to the structured and butchered lives of those on the brink of sanity. Control itself hasn’t been mastered by many and in Esme’s case and many others she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Wandering about the house, the beach she learns what the grass feels like on bare feet or the sting of frost on your cheeks. These little details are meaningless to some but for Esme they are the dawning of a new era of innocence and bliss.
So take the time to decide whether to run or to walk take your shoes off and climb the trees because when you are old and your time is all but spent, you will scream when someone moves you blanket or clip your hair off, all to preserve the bits of yourself that you carry with you. Because there is no identity without control.
Wow pia, this is really thought provoking. I love that last paragraph how you leave the reader to think about their life. To think about wheter they have control of their life. Amazing pia!!!!!!!!!!! Tres bien!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is great, i really like deep connections, and the whole thing about our differences, and how it makes us who we are, really great and good job!!!
ReplyDeletePia,
ReplyDeletethis post is so wonderful and revolutionary!
I never thought about how our choices make up who we are! Your do insightful! I have come to feel the same way at times, and just wanting to escape from the world and it's fads.
Another thing to think about is history. Like you said at the bottom, we will always try to preserve our youth: "the good old days"
but what I've recently been thinking of, is why do you have to step outside of yourself and look in and pity yourself at a certain age?
I believe truely living, means enjoying every secound of the day, even if you spent that day crying over a failed test or head in a toilet with a stomach flu.
My goal in life is to live to the fullest, not to follow the fads of our times.
Thank you for the wonderful post
love
Isabelle
as usually, phia, your post was remarkably written, with beautious vocabulary and a sturdy idea to hold it up, much like a prosperous tomato vine, laden with fruit, held up by the dowel of richness. you touched on really interesting points that almost seemed rebellious at times, and it's something that i think many people can feel uncomfy venturing deep into, and i applaud you for being courageous enough to expose your readers to this topic. lovely words, missus wall-stun! you never cease to amaze me.
ReplyDelete