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Show KATHLEEN NORRIS Charity Can Cure Restless Wife "T AM A FRIGHTENED WOM- AN," writes Mary Friedman, from Indianapolis. "Here In the midst of a modern city, with good health, a good husband, and plenty of this world's goods, I am beginning begin-ning to be sick with terror. When I married Frank, 19 years ago, I would have said that what I have today would have fulfilled my highest high-est dreams; I only wanted one child, I got him, a fine boy now in high school.' I wanted to love my husband and to have him love me, and that difficult wish was granted, too. Frank is a wonderful man In every way. "Well, then, what's the matter? I wish I knew. I've even been to a psychiatrist, but as he began his kindly, sympathetic questions I suddenly sud-denly began to laugh and then to cry and I unceremoniously left, and didn't go back. "The symptoms of my trouble and believe me, it is trouble are these: I feel a terrible distaste for everything, In sudden fits and starts. Making a bed, discussing meals with my part-time maid, dressing to go out with Frank, lunching lunch-ing with women friends, I will find myself suffocating with a terrible restless feeling, as if I wanted to scream, tear things to pieces, rush out into the open air. Often I find tears running quietly down my cheeks. "Reading a book seems out of the question now, and things like card games, movies, radio, all the amusements that once meant something some-thing to me just make me ache with boredom. "I told the psychiatrist that I needed excitement, romance, self-expression self-expression and as I said it, it sounded so adolescent and immature imma-ture that I was ashamed. When Frank asks me what I mean by en who do go into these neurotic despairs, and find it almost im-posible im-posible to get their feet firmly or. the ground again, and once more breathe the air of healthy living and serving and enjoying life. Well, perhaps the interests of a woman's life are like a bank. Put love and interest into your life from the beginning, from the happy days when everything goes well, and later on you can draw out that love and interest, infinitely increased In volume. Spread your sympathies and activities from the golden days of youth, first love, engagement, marriage, honeymoon, new home, new baby, new friends. Live fully and generously in those years, and when the first flush of zest and enthusiasm en-thusiasm begins to fade as it must you will have a hundred outlets for your energy that are not essentially essen-tially dependent upon youth and bloom. Yes, languages, gardens, crossword cross-word puzzles, games, radio, Red Cross, charities all have their place in a balanced life. Obligations to the less fortunate should play a very important part in our lives as American women, and unless you are sharing, and sharing on a pretty pret-ty generous scale, it Is not surprising surpris-ing that you feel possessions and privileges sometimes fall rather flat. In your case I would pick the lowest slum in the city, and the dirtiest house. Your organized charities char-ities will find it for you. I would go there every day, take care of an invalid, cook children a school lunch, send filthy bedding to a cleaner, wash dishes and wipe kitchen shelves. There would be small glamor and romance in this undertaking, but there would be heartfilling compensations, and just to get home to a hot bath, an affectionate af-fectionate son, a good and loved companion, an appetizing dinner, a freshly turned-down bed, a fat book and a long night's rest would begin to seem to you the miracles of wealth and comfort that they are. -. . . tears running quietly . . ." change, romance, self-expression, I don't know. All I know is that I am letting my nerves get oui of control and I am afraid of the future. "Finally," says Mary's letter, "please don't advise me to take up Red Cross or hospital work, study a language, go off on a trip by myself, take up book-binding, upholstery or church work. It drives me mad to think of substituting namby-pamby busy work for the raging dissatisfaction deep within me. Sometimes for as much as two consecutive days I will be contented con-tented and occupied, then this hunger hun-ger for something I can't define seizes me and I feel as if I should fly to pieces." This last sentence reminds me of one of those capable old ladies who sends for a doctor and then gives him a complete diagnosis of her disorder and tells him what to prescribe. pre-scribe. For Mary here mentions several actual cures for her unhappy condition, con-dition, but discounts them all, untried, un-tried, as namby-pamby busy work. And ridiculous as it is for a woman as fortunate as she to fall into this state, yet it is just our comfortable, protected, apparently carefree worn- |