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Fredrik Backman

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“— he said don't call police. I promised I wouldn't. — it would make us in more trouble. — he left. We heard car. I remember this part, too. I told Sara he was right; we shouldn't call the police. Somehow, even then, I felt him as a victim. I told her that they would put him in prison, that prison would not reform him: It would make him worse. Was this a kind of Stockholm syndrome? Does it happen that fast, in the space of an hour? Sara was more afraid than I, but also more alive. She picked up the phone. No dial tone. He had cut the wires. How would a rapist have time to cut the phone wires or know where to find them in the dark, dank basement? How long had he been in the house? How long had he been plotting this crime? "He kept saying he wouldn't hurt us. He kept saying to listen, to be quiet." I was quiet. I listened. I'm still listening now. I hear a rush, in my mind's inner ear, of insistence. A kind of aural premonition, but a kind of premonition that goes both backward and forward, the soundless protest of all the raped, shamed, and silenced women from the beginning to the end of time. 'He hurt you, he altered you forever,' the chorus soundlessly insists, grating on my inner ear — the ear that wishes not to be reminded of feeling. I respond to that chorus: 'Hurt' is not the right word for what that man did to me. I feel a void. Something got cut out of me in that hour — my capacity for pain and fear were removed. There is no more tender flesh. It's quite liberating to have feeling removed, the fear and pain of life now dulled. Nabokov once said, 'Life is pain.' Buddhists, too, believe that to live is to crave and to crave is to feel pain. Had I not been catapulted, in that one hour, halfway to death, and therefore closer to enlightenment? Later, of course, I would come to reject this understanding of what happened to me that day. Yes, I was partly released from the pain of being alive. But my spirit had traveled, not toward the infinite divinity of enlightenment, but toward the infinite nothingness of indifference. Instead of fear, I felt numb. Instead of sadness, I experienced a complete absence of hope. Indifference is a dangerous disease. 'He kept saying to listen, to be quiet.' I have listened, and I have been quiet all my life. But now I will speak.”

FearSilenceTraumaDenialRape
Book:Denial: A Memoir of Terror
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“Уся відвага суспільства виливалася саме там, на туалетній стіні. — Інтимні туалетні революції. От тобі й відвага, от тобі й суспільство. Тільки всираючись від страху, вони напишуть «ганьба Т. Ж.» чи «їбати БКП». Навіть не кажи. Отаке все наше довбане дисидентство. Єдиним громадським місцем, де ці люди протестували, були громадські туалети.”

SilenceRevolutionProtestToiletDissident
Book:Natural Novel
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“The Bounded Boundless In the haven of solitude, the heart is on fire, For beneath the layers, there begins the explosion, deep in the soul, the heavenly hush, the holy communion. The world may wonder, 'Is this loneliness?' No, no! Have you heard of aloneness? The luminous solitude where silence strikes a fire; The contemplative cave, where a person is burned In the flames of longing, only to be a seeker and sage. As a moth to a flame, there the soul dives, In the sea of solitude, to hunt the pearls that lie deep within. The moment arrives when the vision travels inward, Leaving the world outside, you find a new world inside. Is this the world of luminous stillness, the enlightening solitude, the heart of heaven? In the heart of silence, you go deep to find, in the world outside, you were nobody, but, in the world inside, you are somebody! Somebody with identity, and there begins the divine alchemy. You, the moth, find your wings in the longing for flames, burning in the fire, you find your flight. You, the seeker, soar above the finite to infinity, The bliss in burning. 'I Sense My Thirst'....Excerpt Jayita Bhattacharjee”

LifeInspirationalEarthNatureHealingSilenceSolitudeEmotions
Author:Jayita Bhattacharjee
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