“A most disagreeable and threatening sort of restlessness spoiled all my happiness”

“I was very busy – there was much to be done for I like cleanliness indoors, and there was the garden; gradually a most disagreeable and threatening sort of restlessness spoiled all my happiness and took away my peace. It is hard to describe, but it was as though I couldn't stop hurrying. I lingered over nothing, neither work nor loveliness. As soon as I began a thing I longed for it to be over; and my smallest jobs I could see and count ahead of me in endless time. I hurried to get them done and when they were done I had no spirit in me to enjoy the time saved by the haste. Precious sights slipped past me: one short gaze at a lovely thing, the moon or the evening star over the fields, or a flower or the face of my really beloved old neighbour, and I would shoot away to something else. Thus concentration began to slip [...].”

– Margiad Evans, A Ray of Darkness