The God of Small Things: Oneness

I was so fired up when I finished the reading. The idea of oneness has always haunted me. I found myself crying during the incest scene between Rahel and Estha, and yet catching myself b/c incest is wrong of course. But I was overwhelmed with compassion for them both. For some reason, as I was reading it I was reacquainted with the emotions that I encountered when I was depressed...the emotions that I still struggle with. And yes, I definitely feel that both twins were depressed. (flat/inappropriate affect, lack of motivation, not finding pleasure in the things that they usually found pleasure in, mainly just being together). During depression, psychologists say that patients seek to find a physical manifestation of the "good" feeling that they may not be feeling internally. (This can be seen in a very graphic sex-scene in Monsters Ball between the two main characters). Patients feel that if they can physically feel good, then perhaps the emotion of feeling good will follow. Couple this with the sensation of lonliness that comes along with the separation from that which you have always known. It is said that patients who experience limb-removal experience a sort of mourning for the physical loss of the limbs that their minds can still feel. This tells me that prostetic parts are not just there for looks. In the absence of said limb(s), the brain is still sending commands for them to do work (out of sheer habit.) Such are these two-egg twins. They were severed from eachother at the train station. Separated, but always experiencing the absence of the other. I can make this connection-

When I had my daughter, I underwent an intense depression at our separation. We were no longer we, but she and I. The day after she was born, I stared at her. Silently. I felt that I would have to get to know her all over again. Separate from me. That oneness was gone. For months after she was born, I found myself talking to my stomach ("what should we eat this morning?"). I felt a gaping emptiness in my womb...As I read, it occured to me that when we are in the womb, and when we are making love, are the only two times that we as humans experience oneness. Perhaps, all mankind is just trying to recreate the oneness that was present at our very first breath. I have loved so hard, that I have wanted to absorb/be absorbed by that which was the object of my affection...(there's a thin line between love and crazy, this almost sounds like canabalism).

When Jill was two, I was in the mall with her, and there was this guy there (in the Sbarro line) staring at her. She was waving and smiling at him, as is typical Jillian, and he just stood there and stared at her. He never said a word, never even smirked. He just watched her. I paid for our food, and quickly walked away utterly freaked out. This saying blared in my mind: "It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all." In that moment, as I was overwhelmed by all the possibilities of the terrible things that could happen to my child, I saw that as complete bullshit. I tend to be more morbid than most in a lot of ways. I would have rather never known Jill, (I wouldn't miss her that way anyhow), than to love her like I do and have to suffer the loss of her existence. This is how the God of Small Things ends...was it worth it? I think for Ammu, she would say the same as me. No. She loved those that were hurt in the process too much, and would not have acted had she known the result. But what a beautiful story anyways...I'm just glad it isn't mine to tell.