:: book bound

I first read Long Day's Journey Into Night in my high school drama class. During each class, we'd all sit in a circle and take turns reading character lines.

Somehow, I had entirely forgotten about this when I picked up the book at a University of Toronto book sale for a mere two dollars. The night I finally picked it up, my brow furrowed and I wondered to myself why the text seemed so familiar.

Then, it dawned on me.

I put the book down at that point, instead finding myself tantalized by other novels coaxing me to their pages. It wasn't until mid-February that I picked it up again to finally finish. Not only had I forgotten my original reading of the play, I had also forgotten how much I enjoyed it.

Let's face it, the characters are drop dead miserable. They spend much of the play wallowing in their misery, taking both sly and direct jabs at one another, and criticizing each other's lives. Essentially, it's any family behind closed doors, only, at an extreme.

However, dependent on your frame of mind and where you're coming from at the time of reading, the characters will either sound dreadful or they'll reach into your chest, pull out your heart, and stomp on it. I found myself empathizing with Mary and stopping dead in my tracks whilst reading her sad, rambling monologues.

"How could you believe me - when I can't believe myself? I've become such a liar. I never lied about anything once upon a time. Now I have to lie, especially to myself. But how can you understand, when I don't myself. I've never understood anything about it, except that one day long ago I found I could no longer call my soul my own." (p. 93)

Mary's delusion, if we want to call it that, has more or less been a consequence of her drug addiction, but her mentality is experienced by people everywhere regardless. Even I find myself often wondering if I am simply moving about my days in a hazy state of lies. Many times I question myself why I do the things I do - what benefit am I receiving from my work? Who am I helping? What need am I satisfying, if any at all? What? Why? How?

It's almost as if you get so caught up in living the routine, day to day lie that it becomes the truth, and finally, one day, you no longer know the difference between the false and the honest. What happens when you reach that point? What clears up the picture? What fogs it up even more?

Although the characters struggle with their own demons, O'Neill highlights the general struggles of waking each morning. They suffer as we suffer. They remember, feud and share laughs with one another. They live lives that they necessarily did not want to live.

Perhaps I'm thinking a bit too much lately. I'm drowning in a sea of nostalgia and as such, every emotion has been heightened, increasing in sensitivity to a degree I haven't felt in a long time. It's Mary's inner turmoil bubbling over, begging me to listen --

It's time to stop lying.