The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood – Youth – Dependency

by Tove Ditlevsen

Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own.

I think about the fact that once the most important thing in the world was whether my mother liked me; but the child who yearned so deeply for that love and always had to search for any sign of it doesn’t exist anymore. Now I think that my mother cares for me, but it doesn’t make me happy.

Our friendship is over just as my childhood is. Now the last remnants fall away from me like flakes of sun-scorched skin, and beneath looms an awkward, an impossible adult. I read in my poetry album while the night wanders past the window – and, unawares, my childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.

I realize that I detest changes. It’s difficult to keep a grasp on yourself when things around you change.