Instead of a Letter

by Diana Athill

It would be an absurd exaggeration to say that for twenty years I had been unhappy—I had enjoyed many things, and for most of the later years I had been contented enough—but it is the exact truth to say that if, at any minute during those years I had been asked to think about it, made to stop doing whatever was distracting me and pass judgment on my own life, I should have said without hesitation that failure was its essence. I had never really wanted anything but the most commonplace satisfactions of a woman’s life, and those, which I had wanted passionately, I had failed to achieve. That I would have answered in such a way is not speculation. I did answer exactly that, to myself, over and over again, in the minutes before falling asleep, in the worse minutes of waking up, when I was walking down a street, when I looked up from a book, while I was stirring scrambled eggs in a pan. The knowledge was my familiar companion. It had been, at first, hot coals of pain and grief, and had later grown cold; but cold though it had become, its lumpy presence had still been there. My only pride had been that having by nature an easy disposition, and a fund of pleasure in life stored up from a happy childhood and youth, I was good at living with failure. I did not think that it had turned me disagreeable or mad, and that I considered an achievement.