Thursday 21 August 2008

Hello? Is anybody out there?

ortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily--applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela.  She came and shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.  "Ah!" cried she, in French, "you speak my language as well as Mr. Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.  She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked--how it did smoke!--and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester.  Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little beds in another place.  I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.  And Mademoiselle--what is your name?"  "Eyre--Jane Eyre."  "Aire?  Bah!  I cannot say it.  Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city--a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel.  We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs."  "Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?" asked Mrs. Fairfax.  I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot.  "I wish," continued the good lady, "you would ask her a question or two about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?"  "Adele," I inquired, "with whom did you live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of?"  "I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin.  Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses.  A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it.  Shall I let you hear me sing now?"

5 comments:

  1. I know I am not the ideal person to be telling you this, and I apologise for not doing this over a cup of tea, but it's going to be OK. Not just better than it is now, but some day things will genuinely be well.

    I can tell you from personal experience that a combination of talking to a shrink and taking antidepressants does help. It really is nice to have someone to openly talk to (even if that's her job). And I can't explain it any better, but when I was on the drugs and therapy, though I experienced absolutely no noticeable change in myself, slowly (in a few months) it appeared as if the world was treating me differently. Mainly, I wasn't alone as often. Today, things for me are by no means peachy, but I've stopped seeing it as a no-win situation. And I'm sure you'll soon feel that way too.

    I think feelings of loneliness, hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, ... and a whole slew of gloomy things are a lot more common than people are willing to candidly share. Many people struggle through these demons, putting up only a brave front for the rest of the world to see. I wish they would just come out and share their struggles so everyone else realises they aren't the only ones going all this.

    Oh, and I hope you have a blast in London!

    (It's taken me a few days of going back-and-forth on this to actually put my thoughts down here, as I wasn't (and I'm still not) certain you'd listen to someone who's admittedly not particularly happy. But I decided it wouldn't hurt to try.)

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  2. Firstly, thank you. It always helps even when someone just responds to one of my posts and yours was a good response. It's really good to know that there is possibly a light at the end of the tunnel.
    Also thank you for sharing what you have. What you said was really encouraging and it certainly never hurts to reach out as you have here. I guess it's just good to hear that the therapy and drug combination can work for people.

    I guess it's just not something that people feel they can talk openly about, after all this is really the only place where I talk about. The majority of my friends think I'm perfectly happy. And I can't promise that I'm going to listen to all of this but I'm going to try, I want to try and that has to be a start. But thank you for all you said there. And good luck with your own struggles.

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  3. All I really want is for someone to hug me and tell me that it will be ok, that some day it will be better and that right now they're here for me. I'm not asking for a miracle. just a friend to sit with me. Someone to have a cup of tea and a silly chat with.
    Am I such a horrible person that no-one even wants to help me?


    This really made an impact on me because I feel the exact same way. I don't have any friends, haven't since I was a child, and I just feel so alone at times like this. It's hard for me to see a reason to carry on living if I'm always going to be isolated from everyone and never be cared about.

    I hope that you are feeling a bit better, at least. I'm sorry I don't have much good advice because I am in a similar situation.

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  4. hi socialphobic
    I'm sorry that things are so hard for you at the moment and thank you for your comment. Is there no-one at all you can turn to for help at the moment? Even family, siblings etc?

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  5. Thank you. I have tried talking to my mum but she just doesn't understand and I always end up upsetting her.

    Nick

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