“It must have been eight years ago, when I was sick in bed; in a fever or delirium I conceived the idea that there was a coffin under my bed. The thought took hold of me, somehow, like an octopus, and I used to writhe under it, and get into fearful perspirations. I never went near a bed that I didn’t think of this thing with the same horror.
“And so I seemed to have created a nervousness, a sense of dread, before which I was absolutely helpless. I cannot tell you how hopelessly or fearfully I suffered, or what depths of despondency and despair and blackness I was cast into. I cannot understand how a creature could so manufacture torments for itself. But this is not all, just for once have mercy—and yet even now I am laughing at myself!
“The winter I was sixteen I was much disappointed that I could not go to college, and almost the whole winter, when I was not diverted, I would brood over this habit. As I grew older, it would come to me in spasms, and it seemed to my dawning sense so monstrously child-like, so insane, that I was aghast that it had power to affect me. I can find no words to tell you of the unspeakable horror with which I saw, in my older days, that a thought could so torment me; the mere fact of its being able to torment I could never forget. I know it was silly, unreasonable; and yet every time it came to me I would be plunged into a hopelessness and melancholy, than which I can honestly conceive nothing more fearful upon earth.
“Well, I continued to pursue myself with this morbidity (I would almost, rather kill myself than write this). As I got older my terror was less, but my melancholy greater, until I would be only half conscious of what I was allowing myself to do. I seemed to have engendered within myself a hob-goblin. Once—it was only last winter—I saw a nasty word written on a fence, and it sent a shudder through me, for I knew it would follow me and make me think of other things like it. I felt, since thoughts have such power to terrorize me, how can I ever get away from them?
“Oh, how I have struggled—tried to say it was not true—that I was just as sane as other people! And this made my thirst for beauty all the more maddening, and my melancholy all the more complete! So I have lived, at intervals, and words cannot describe the hell that I have endured, the more horrible because it seemed to me so unreasonable, so insane. It occurred to me more or less this summer, though in a milder form; but it often frightened me more than ever, as I felt how beautiful you were, and what you would think of me, if you knew I was capable of being the prey of such thoughts. So they were always more dreadful to me.
“Can you possibly understand how the thought of a word could make me shudder? The mere idea of my being capable of thinking of anything that was not beautiful! When I longed to be only the embodiment of beauty—and sometimes I am beautiful! I look into the glass, and I seem to have something in my face that is a promise of a glory to come—a light, a something,—I love to imagine it. And then, that a thought should knock me prone, and make me cringe—from the mere fact of its lowness and meanness!
“For the last two or three days I have again victimized myself; and when I was not studying I was asking myself in anguish what was the matter with me, and if there was no hope for me on earth. I dodged around and tried to laugh it off, then I went to the piano and lost myself in the dissatisfaction of my playing; but when I stopped, I was conscious of a great depression, as though I were chained in a dungeon. I jumped up, and said I could stand it no longer. I will tell Thyrsis, I said; but no, I will die first! I added. He could not tolerate me afterwards, he would think me only fit for the insane-asylum. Oh, why should I be so cursed? And then, somehow, I imagined that I told you, and that you laughed at me, that you pitied me—and that you held out your hand, and said, ‘Come, you shall find beauty—poor, deluded, wretched, little creature!’ I really imagined that this had happened, and I was relieved as with a draught of fresh air.
“Oh, God in Heaven, to think that I could ever have been so degraded! My head hurts, and I absolutely am dazed, to think that I have been able to write you of something for which (though it has not been my making) I am so ashamed and humiliated I can hardly hold my head up. I think in my short life I have atoned for the sins of many souls.”
Section 3. Such was the old-time letter. “And now,” wrote Corydon, “I don’t want you to think that if I did not send you this, it was because I was afraid to do it, or unwilling to trust to your love. It was simply because I felt that I could conquer these things—that it would be weak and contemptible of me not to do so. Nor is the reason I write you now that I have not been able to conquer them, that I am still at the mercy of such habits. I am a grown woman, and I am not afraid of words; I tell myself this a hundred times; and it is true—and yet there is a way in which it is not true. The thing is so intricate—I never get to the end of it; I rid myself of the fear of a hateful idea, but there remains the fact that I should have been afraid; there is the fear of fear. And then comes a flood of shame—that I should have it in me to be afraid of fear!
“Thyrsis, as I write to you now I see clearly how perfectly preposterous and unreal all this is; and again there comes to me the impulse to tear up this letter, and banish the troop of hob-goblins from my mind. But no, this time I am determined to make a clean breast of the thing—for I see that secrecy and solitude are what it feeds on. If I were happy and busy with you such ideas would have no power over me. But think how it is, with my loneliness and despair! I don’t want to say anything to make your task harder—but oh, Thyrsis, it is frightful to have nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait! The baby wakes me up in the night and I lie for hours—it is at such times that these phantoms take hold of me. Do you realize that I literally never know what it is to have more than three or four consecutive hours of sleep?