I've been thinking about this question as I read Margaret Laurence's "The Diviners" (which is an excellent book. I would certainly recommend it). The protagonist in the novel is Morag Gunn, a writer who grows up in small-town Manawaka, Manitoba. Because her parents die when she is quite young, she goes to live with some family friends, Christie and Prin. Christie is the town garbage-collector, known as the Scavenger. When she grows up, Morag marries and moves to Toronto, attempting to rid herself of her past. But it always seems to catch up to her - sometimes literally, as she runs into an old friend in Toronto, right before she leaves her husband.
I wonder how much time I spend attempting to rid myself of my past. I have moved away from my small-town, away from its anti-anything-outside mindset, and now I call myself 'open-minded,' educated. I am changed.
Powell River seems but a shadow, an echo in my mind.
Or so I think. Until memories like stones dropped in a pond create ripples in my mind. My past haunts my present.
I find it amazing how deeply I can be affected by merely seeing a picture from a few years ago. Something within me feels so uncomfortable with the image of a person from my past.
Nervous reactions have also stayed with me. If a door opens suddenly, I am nine-years-old and terrified again, instantly transported back to my room in that cold, distant, built-in-the-twenties home.
Why can't I get away?
It doesn't seem fair.
This summer I very well may return to my hometown. But I long not to. The idea of returning reminds me of the feeling you would get if you tried to fit into a pair of jeans that you wore when you were in middle school: they are tight and restricting, strangley uncomfortable, even out-of-style.
I don't want that life, but it follows me, informs my decisions, feeds my fears.
Is silence golden because it is empty?
When Morag first meets her husband-to-be, she tells him she has no past.
If only that could be true.
I am torn between two worlds, unable to let go of who I was, and unwilling to fully embrace who I am becoming.
