DIY History | Transcribe | Iowa Women’s Lives: Letters and Diaries | Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s

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Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s

Page 017

40. and doing the things I want most to do, I am completely happy and content; when conditions are the reverse and of an oppressive nature, I am unaccountably depressed. I get so excited and find calming down impossibly difficult thereafter. Space, although not absolutely essential, cleanliness, sunshine and uninterrupted time are factors of cheer in a happy environment. They help to stimulate the imagination and a flow of ideas. Being extremely sensitive - although I dislike using the term because it has been so greatly over used - abnormalities in others have not only bothered me but have actually [hurt?]. As a child, to see a cripple in the street was both abhorrent and upsetting. If possible I would avoid looking at him or cross the street to get out of the way. To see lepers, horrible disfigurements of dread disease and the crazed self-inflicted pain of holy men in India - for example - does horrible things to one. I have the same feeling of repulsion for illness and suffering so whenever possible I shy away from hospitals with their associations and odors of decomposition, anaesthesia, and disinfectant. To be physically unfit has ever in the past been unfairly [illegible]

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40. and doing the things I want most to do, I am completely happy and content; when conditions are the reverse and of an oppressive nature, I am unaccountably depressed. I get so excited and find calming down impossibly difficult thereafter. Space, although not absolutely essential, cleanliness, sunshine and uninterrupted time are factors of cheer in a happy environment. They help to stimulate the imagination and a flow of ideas. Being extremely sensitive - although I dislike using the term because it has been so greatly over used - abnormalities in others have not only bothered me but have actually [hurt?]. As a child, to see a cripple in the street was both abhorrent and upsetting. If possible I would avoid looking at him or cross the street to get out of the way. To see lepers, horrible disfigurements of dread disease and the crazed self-inflicted pain of holy men in India - for example - does horrible things to one. I have the same feeling of repulsion for illness and suffering so whenever possible I shy away from hospitals with their associations and odors of decomposition, anaesthesia, and disinfectant. To be physically unfit has ever in the past been unfairly [illegible]