Katherine Murphy Dickson -- 27 april 1970

• Katherine Murphy Dickson is een Amerikaanse schrijfster, van onder meer Diary For a Daughter August 1969 - August 1970, dat ze schreef na de geboorte van haar tweede kind.

Friday, April 24,1970
Menstruation for the first time since I became pregnant with Katherine Louise. I feel empty and anxious to do things. My dreaminess has gone. I have almost no thoughts. Denise had a baby girl Tuesday.

Saturday, April 25,1970
I was thinking yesterday about the dominant feeling of my childhood being that my mother would die. Why did I fear separation from her so much? Do all children feel that and to that extent? And I think this feeling is directly connected with my two childhood surgeries, my initial school experiences, bladder infections when I left New York and returned to Boston, and when I got married. I still don't understand it all. That plus the sort of nightmarish feeling that everything around me is coming alive or at least growing unboundedly like yeast. Or more like piles of clutter getting ever bigger. Out of control. Maybe like pieces of my own unconscious out of place. That plus the thing about feeling. They probably all fit together in some key way. My inner landscape.

Sunday, April 26,1970
Today Frank said he didn't get anything done because I spent so much time talking. I felt angry. Then I felt tarnished and as though I was soiled, needed to go to confession or turn a new leaf. He had asked me earlier if I liked being married better than being single. Afterward, I thought that it was easier to like myself when I was single. Then I wondered why. And I think it was because I didn't have to experience so much my own feelings of anger and hostility. When I feel angry with Frank or hurt by him, I don't like myself. My own negative feelings disturb me.

Monday April 27, 1970
Frank told me a strange Story about Bill Cosby and Robert Culp. Dominance passed from Culp to Cosby as the TV series [I Spy] continued.

Tuesday, April 28, 1970
A terrible beauty is born. I do feel like I am my own person again. Anything I don't do is because of myself. 1 have a vision of happiness. The binoculars. The drapes. Shopping for vacation. Frank slammed me each time. I told him so this morning. I told him that I was going to be happy in spite of him. In my heart I think I did the right thing by us both. Wrote Dot and Mother last night. I feel caught up on all my letters.