Some Thoughts for the New Year

Further excerpts from my hospital journal...

Note: The names used in my journal are not the true names of the individuals.

January 22, 1958:

Today is very serene and peaceful. I sent a letter off to Gloria yesterday accepting her terms with reservations and now I feel better. This week I should know to some extent what my immediate future is to be. My confidence that the x-ray will be favorable is strong most of the time, but occasionally I wonder if I can take it if the x-ray is not good. I'm not very proud of the way I've taken things so far, but I think I could have done much worse . And I know, being aware of my own limitations, that I have taken all I can take. I hope and pray that I will be able to flip my lid in a relatively dignified manner.

Last weekend with Tony was very pleasant and very exciting, but I think the most important thing is that I learned something from it. I learned that it is possible for me to resist an attractive, appealing man. The emphasis on men in my life is gradually declining (I hope!) and my feeling that he and I would not be good for each other increases daily in spite of the fun we have had with letters and visits.

January 23, 1958:

Such a sweet letter from Tony yesterday...poor guy is awfully lonely and unhappy. Wish I could help him, but I'm afraid it would be a case of the blind leading the blind. I'm not going to answer his letter right away. I'm not sure what I want to say, nor am I sure how I want to say it. Life really is a "bowl of worms"!

January 24, 1958:

How virtuous I feel this evening! Yesterday I wrote four letters and today I dispatched six more! Now I can relax for a while and start letting them stack up again!

Father Carey was in today and we talked about many things, including prayer. He came at a moment when I was very susceptible, and I found the conversation stimulating and rewarding. Perhaps if I could pray it would help me to straighten out my life.

I am not in the mood to write in this journal, although I have many thoughts which I would like to set down. It helps to clarify them in my mind when I write them on paper. My firm resolution to keep up the journal has, like most of my resolutions, not been kept. What a worthless creature I am, and how often I have wished that my life had ended when I went over the cliff that night. But there must be some reason why it turned out the way it did. Perhaps someday God will give me the grace and wisdom to see and understand that reason. I must start to try and pray, if not formally, at least by my actions and by my sufferings, if such experiences as mine can be called that. I seem to hear Sister Godfrey from long ago reminding me to "offer it up" if I skinned my knee and hurt myself!

A happy thought has just occurred to me. I have not written much in my journal lately, and I wonder if it is because I no longer need it so desperately. I know my visit with Gloria helped me, and my talks with Tony have helped too. I spend very little time thinking about the past these days, which is good. And while the present seems disheartening and the future extremely vague, I seem to be finding some satisfaction in them, for my spells of hopelessness and despondency are becoming rare.

One thing which has spurred me on is the wonderful way in which the people here at the hospital have treated me. Their friendship and encouragement have made all this much easier to bear. I feel grateful and humble when I think of things like Cokie saying she wished I were her "kid", and Rosemary bringing me Winnie-the-Pooh books to stimulate my creative imagination. And Georgia and Hortense packing my things and storing them for me. And Denny! Bless him. Not only is he a wonderfully efficient orderly for the hospital, but he is a dear, kind person. I will long remember the evenings spent chatting with him in the diet kitchen, listening to him spin yarns about his childhood and youth on the ranches back in New Mexico.

Perhaps these conversations have awakened a nostalgic streak in me, for I find myself wishing I could someday drive back through Arizona and New Mexico to El Paso for a visit. I can see me walking through the plaza and stopping to gaze at the alligators. And how I would love to go up the long walk to the Library! I wonder if Miss Kelly still presides over the children's department? I suppose the town has changed a great deal, as do all things with time, and I would feel a terrible let-down were I to visit..."You can't go home again", as Thomas Wolfe said. In a way that's a frightening thought. Is there no place or state of mind to which one can turn for comfort and for courage to go on living? Of course the obvious answer is that God is our source for these things, but He is so far away and, to me, so unreachable. Though I will try. I will. And perhaps one day I will find Him and know Him, and in doing so, find some peace of mind.