#home is hell.

[writingwithsnails]

Early on I evaded my mother’s caresses (she who was caressed by no one) because her hands that day smelled of dishwashing. Hurt and confused she withdrew, hasty as she was, and gave up once and for all on the work of loving me.

Early On I Evaded— (1978) by Tove Ditlevsen.

[writingwithsnails]

Tove Ditlevsen, from “Childhood”, The Copenhagen Trilogy. Originally published in Denmark as Barndom (1967).

[writingwithsnails]

Tove Ditlevsen, from “Childhood”, The Copenhagen Trilogy. Originally published in Denmark as Barndom (1967).

[writingwithsnails]

Tove Ditlevsen, from “Childhood”, The Copenhagen Trilogy. Originally published in Denmark as Barndom (1967).

[ text id: "Childhood is long and narrow like a coffin, and you can’t get out of it on your own. It’s there all the time and everyone can see it just as clearly as you can see Pretty Ludvig’s harelip. It’s the same with him as with Pretty Lili, who’s so ugly you can’t imagine she ever had a mother. Everything that is ugly or unfortunate is called beautiful, and no one knows why. You can’t get out of childhood, and it clings to you like a bad smell. You notice it in other children – each childhood has its own smell. You don’t recognize your own and sometimes you’re afraid that it’s worse than others’. You’re standing talking to another girl whose childhood smells of coal and ashes, and suddenly she takes a step back because she has noticed the terrible stink of your childhood. On the sly, you observe the adults whose childhood lies inside them, torn and full of holes like a used and moth-eaten rug no one thinks about anymore or has any use for. You can’t tell by looking at them that they’ve had a childhood, and you don’t dare ask how they managed to make it through without their faces getting deeply scarred and marked by it. You suspect that they’ve used some secret shortcut and donned their adult form many years ahead of time. They did it one day when they were home alone and their childhood lay like three bands of iron around their heart, like Iron Hans in Grimms’ fairy tale, whose bands broke only when his master was freed.

But if you don’t know such a shortcut, childhood must be endured and trudged through hour by hour, through an absolutely interminable number of years. Only death can free you from it, so you think a lot about death, and picture it as a white-robed, friendly angel who some night will kiss your eyelids so that they never will open again. I always think that when I’m grown-up my mother will finally like me the way she likes Edvin now. Because my childhood irritates her just as much as it irritates me, and we are only happy together whenever she suddenly forgets about its existence." ]

[writingwithsnails]

Tove Ditlevsen, from “Childhood”, The Copenhagen Trilogy. Originally published in Denmark as Barndom (1967).

[writingwithsnails]

Tove Ditlevsen, from “Childhood”, The Copenhagen Trilogy. Originally published in Denmark as Barndom (1967).

[writingwithsnails]

Tove Ditlevsen, from “Childhood”, The Copenhagen Trilogy. Originally published in Denmark as Barndom (1967).

[writingwithsnails]

Tove Ditlevsen, from “Childhood”, The Copenhagen Trilogy. Originally published in Denmark as Barndom (1967).