I have emerged from the fog, after days of self-inflicted torture and torment. In those dark hours, as I waded through the flotsam and jetsam in my mind, I searched desperately for the cause, hoping to shut it in my Pandora's box. Words escaped my grasp, I could not write. The cause for this distress was the return of an old love: the written word. A friend found the key and unlocked some of my most treasured memories – the years when I discovered the likes of Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth, Siegfried Sassoon, John Milton, Dante, Christina Rosetti… men and women I had studied and loved for many, many years. Their words comforted me in my deepest, darkest moments.
But four years ago, I left the classroom. All doors were shut, and I couldn't get back in. So I packed my old loves away, and chose to hide behind the likes of Ruth Rendell, PD James, Alexander McCall Smith, Patricia Cornwall, Dashiell Hammet…men and women who could give me a resolution at the end.
But now I am forced to reacquaint myself with my abandoned heroes. They do not offer me resolution, they do not tell me what to do, they are forcing me to think, to question. They make me realise the beauty and futility of this life we have. One tells me to rage against the dying of the night, another whispers: Ah, as the heart grows older, it will come to such sights colder. The third tells me that tranquillity lies in tragedy, where everyone's destiny is known.
They are calling out to me. Will I go back to them like a shamed lover? I do not know. It hurts so much, but now I can go to sleep.
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