month 8.

i'm reading jane eyre. i'm not done with it yet. but elizabeth bennett of pride and prejudice now has a rival for a character in a book i most relate to.

there's this vicious pattern in my life that always lasts 7 months. it even takes place in about the same 7 months of the year.

some quotes.

When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense.

Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night - of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way, a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rapidly devoured the ideal; - I had pronounced judgement to this effect:...You gifted with the power of pleasing him? You of importance to him in any way? Go! your folly sickens me. And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference...How dared you? Poor stupid dupe! - Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night? - Cover your face and be ashamed! He said something in praise of your eyes, did he? Blind puppy! Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness!...it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it.

Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit: thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm; which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to maintain, even externally.

I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment at his not returning to Thornfield yet; but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder - how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr Rochester's movements a matter in which I had any cause to take a vital interest.

...I inevitably recall the moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered him what he deemed an essential service, and he, holding my hand, and looking down on my face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to overflow; in whose emotions I had a part. How near had I approached him at that moment! What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative positions? Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were! So far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to me. I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at the other side of the room, and began conversing with some of the ladies.

I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me.

No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.

I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad - as I am now. Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth - so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane - quite insane...Preconceieved opinions, foregone determinations are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot.

'It may be a candle in a house,' I then conjectured; 'but if so, I can never reach it. It is much too far away: and were it within a yard of me, what would it avail? I should but knock at the door to have it shut in my face.'

Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details. Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude...Let me condense now. I am sick of the subject.