{Madness in the home}[21st-22nd July 1970]

[Redbook1:168-169][19700721:2400]{Madness in the home}[21st-22nd July 1970]

Tuesday 21st-22nd July 1970.

12 midnight

            I must get this down.

            My father is going mad, or is mad already.  How do I know?  I don't, but the effects are the same, and they are what matter: sudden bursts of motiveless anger over minor points, reducing members of the family to tears or to mutinous silence; or longer periods of irritability which leave us tense and taut, wondering which way to jump.  The effect is plain on M and S; B is growing up behind for his age -- not in work especially -- though he is -- but in living: he bursts into tears, etc..  L also cries much more now.  There must be a connection.

            As for me, I am tied to this house.  Even if I could leave the others with a clear conscience, I am financially dependent for the next five years at least.  Thanks largely to his eccentric and antisocial behaviour I have virtually no friends of my age who could compensate for the impending collapse of my family, nor am I easily capable of 'making' them.  The few contacts I have kept from school seem to drift further and further away, and I hesitate to disturb them again.  By the same token I have no 'sex-life'.  All my efforts seem doomed to failure.  Even my writing, an inadequate sublimation, seems juvenile and shallow and accomplishes nothing.

            I begin to realise, just for example, how much I missed by his refusal to meet people in Sussex -- where I spend most of my holidays -- so much so that, at a critical stage I unconsciously followed his example -- how else can I explain it?  -- and could not cope with new faces, refusing to meet them.  In London all his old friends had younger families, of little use to me.

            I feel that I am wasting away, wasted in a vacuum.  I cannot live without communication, therefore I wither.

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