Chapters 9-12
- Claudia Valdez
- May 28, 2023
- 2 min read
May 28th, 2023
Esther does not have anyone to emotionally contain her. She is too unstable to do it herself. The more I read this book, the more lost she feels, and the less she knows what to do with her life. There are many options, so she finds it difficult to make up her mind. At the same time, it feels like time is running out. When we aim for perfection and want to encompass everything, time still passes while we are trying to decide how and what we will do next, and in the meantime, we have not done anything. If there is one thing I learned during the pandemic that has helped me still to this day is the importance of taking things one by one, a day at a time. Besides her crippling depression that privates her from sleeping and performing basic hygiene tasks, that is Esther's issue. She wants to be and do everything, in addition to being instantly perfect at it, which could be inspiring, but it ends up being more self-exploitative than anything.
To me, it seems that she doesn’t let herself feel her feelings, so when she lets them out her feelings overpower her. She says “My voice sounded strange and hollow in my ears”, then continues describing her own voice as zombie because she can’t recognize herself anymore for how exhausted of existing she is. Then, for a moment she considers being her own savior…
A feeling of tenderness filled my heart. My heroine would be myself, only in disguise. She would be called Elaine.
Only to feel discouraged and indecisive next.
I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles, threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three ... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.
She tried to get some help from a psychiatrist, who did not meet her expectations, so she decided to stop seeing him after one electro shock session. However, by the end of chapter 12, Esther has already started thinking about suicide in practical ways, and she can hear voices telling her negative things.
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