My Invented Country
A Memoir
Isabelle Allende
In my case, the natural unhappiness of childhood was aggravated by a mass of complexes so tangled that even today I can not list them. Fortunately, they left no wounds that time has not healed. Once I heard a famous Afro-American writer say that from the time she was a little girl she felt like a stranger in her own family and her home town. She added that nearly all writers have experienced that feeling, even if they have never left their native city. It's a condition inherent in that profession, she suggested; without the anxiety of feeling different, we wouldn't have been driven to write. Writing, when all is said and done is an attempt to understand ones own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic nonconformists, many of whom end up as writers after having failed in other undertakings. This theory lifted a burden from my shoulders. I am not a monster; there are others like me.
I am reading her memoir, and I must say, that I had not, until this moment, read anything that so summed up for me what it is like to have so much inside, needing to get out, and having nowhere to go, until you put it on a page. I think anyone who has ever written anything, has felt like this. And to some folks this might go without saying, but, to me, in this moment, it seems so profound, and explains to me why, even in the midst of my family, and my limited circle of friends, I have, and may always continue to feel, like I am an outsider.
So, if you read this, let me know what you think on this subject?
~Scott