Dear Eliza
25 April 2003

Dear - dearest - Eliza:

A long time ago, I suffered heartbreak. It wasn't on the scale of what has happened to you, but you offered me all the things I have offered you through this time in your life - a severe ass-kicking for the guy stupid enough to walk away from beautiful, fabulous, brilliant you; long emails filled with funny lines and reassurances and quotations and things to take my mind off it; lots of love. It's funny - right before I got your notify for today's entry, I was re-reading old email on my nearly defunct Yahoo account, and I was reading email from you. I am hoping you won't mind that I'm about to quote from it at length, since obviously you won't be the only one reading this. You'll be the only one understanding a lot of it, so perhaps there is a balance there.

Once upon a time - or times, you sent me the following words. I offer them back to you, knowing that if you found these words for me, you can find them for yourself.

I won't presume to offer any words of comfort at this time, but I sometimes find comfort words like these, so I thought I'd share them with you.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see. ~Theodore Roethke

What's gone and what's past help / Should be past grief. ~William Shakespeare

You may my glories and my state depose, / But not my griefs. Still I am king of those. ~William Shakespeare

When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance, and inevitably, we will feel about us their arms, their sympathy, their understanding. ~Helen Keller

It is the nature of grace always to fill spaces that have been empty. ~Goethe

Feeling light within, I walk. ~Navajo Night Chant

During a discussion of Camelot:

I feel the empty ache of loss, knowing that Lancelot has fled, seeing Jenny cry with her hair cut off and watching her and Arthur say goodbye, knowing that the dream they had is over ... hearing the haunting echo of Mordred telling Arthur that his table is cracked. I feel that emptiness, but I also feel the fullness of the hope that Arthur is able to maintain in the face of his heartbreak -- the hope that he will still be able to make his dream a reality, the hope that he still has so much to live for, and that he will fight for it.

~

Billy: Will you ever forgive my letting go?
Ally: I forgive it, but I'm still not sure I'll ever understand it.

~
John Cage: The world is no longer a romantic place. Some of its people still are, however, and therein lies the promise. Don't let the world win, Ally McBeal.

The emphasis in the following was yours:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden.

You chose and your world was shaken - so what? The choice may have been mistaken - the choosing was not. You have to move on. Look at what you've done - not at where you are, what you'll be. Sometime in the long-ago past, I wrote to you But it's a long, ugly road, and yes, it casts a shadow that may never vanish. It may never vanish because you gave him a part of yourself, and no matter what happened, when he walked out--you didn't take it all back.

You didn't take it all back, Eliza, but he didn't get the best of you. That will always be yours, no matter what the future brings you.

That will always be yours.

I love you.
Melissa

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