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 197

to the position that I am only hereby beginning to feel my way out. In so much as the individual inmate constitution cannot be changed to meet environment requirements, the environment shall have to bear alteration.
It has been rather tough going but I should like to believe that the road is beginning to ease up a bit. I am even beginning to think that I may live again - which doesn't mean verbally, just breathing and eating but much more. It means that I may paint again and live in my depictions.As long as there may be any painting to be done in the world living means just that to me.
Unluckily however, I can't seem to proceed in a direct line but must always apparently do a certain amount of detouring. It would seem up to now that I have been travelling at a snail's pace, if at all, up a precipitous mountain shelf-road. The slopes and valleys drop out of sight and are lost in great distances. The general direction of my route has been steeply up; the pathway dangerously circuitous and rocky. Much of the time it has been a grinding along in low gear around ungarded blind corners and unexpected hair-pin curves, with stops at the numerous caution signals delineating the way. Perhaps this does effect a more interesting byway but it certainly is less comfortable than it need be.
Contrasted with what it used to be however, I scarsely know for a while what pain was. Discomfort yes! - Always - enough to make the average man howl - but not as it used to be with me. There was a time when distress was so pernicious; so compelling; so unrelenting; so constantly dining away; so buckling up and clamping down in a vise. Later still it became so ill-fitting; so levelling; so deadly. Now it can be throttled to some extent but always it pops up again. it is not to be discouraged.
All I have wanted is permanent relief from this monster, I want so desperately to get away from my stomach.

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to the position that I am only hereby beginning to feel my way out. In so much as the individual inmate constitution cannot be changed to meet environment requirements, the environment shall have to bear alteration. It has been rather tough going but I should like to believe that the road is beginning to ease up a bit. I am even beginning to think that I may live again - which doesn't mean verbally, just breathing and eating but much more. It means that I may paint again and live in my depictions.As long as there may be any painting to be done in the world living means just that to me. Unluckily however, I can't seem to proceed in a direct line but must always apparently do a certain amount of detouring. It would seem up to now that I have been travelling at a snail's pace, if at all, up a precipitous mountain shelf-road. The slopes and valleys drop out of sight and are lost in great distances. The general direction of my route has been steeply up; the pathway dangerously circuitous and rocky. Much of the time it has been a grinding along in low gear around ungarded blind corners and unexpected hair-pin curves, with stops at the numerous caution signals delineating the way. Perhaps this does effect a more interesting byway but it certainly is less comfortable than it need be. Contrasted with what it used to be however, I scarsely know for a while what pain was. Discomfort yes! - Always - enough to make the average man howl - but not as it used to be with me. There was a time when distress was so pernicious; so compelling; so unrelenting; so constantly dining away; so buckling up and clamping down in a vise. Later still it became so ill-fitting; so levelling; so deadly. Now it can be throttled to some extent but always it pops up again. it is not to be discouraged. All I have wanted is permanent relief from this monster, I want so desperately to get away from my stomach.