Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.
Misery is a vacuum. A space without air, a suffocated dead place, the abode of the miserable. Misery is a tenement block, rooms like battery cages, sit over your own droppings, lie on your own filth. Misery is a no U-turns, no stopping road. Travel down it pushed by those behind, tripped by those in front. Travel down it at furious speed though the days are mummified in lead. It happens so fast once you get started, there's no anchor from the real world to slow you down, nothing to hold on to. misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall. Whatever your private hell, you'll find millions like it in Misery. This is the town where everyone's nightmares come true.
I know i'm running away but my heart has become a sterile zone where nothing can grow. I don't want to face facts, shape up, snap out of it. In the pumped-out, dry bed of my heart, i'm learning to live without oxygen. I might get to like it in a masochistic way. I've sunk too low to make decisions and that brings with it a certain lightheaded freedom. Walking on the moon there's no gravity. There are dead souls in uniform ranks, spacesuits too bulky for touch, helmets too heavy for speech. The miserable millions moving in time without hope. There are no clocks in Misery, just an endless ticking.
~written on the body by jeanette winterson.
