The Suffering of Words
A warm morning in late May and I watched the green scenery pass as I sat in a train conveying me to the place which, except for the past six weeks, has been my home these last four years.
For those six weeks - emotional turmoil while I stayed with she whom I love and loved while the beauty and growth and spreading green of May passed me by as I lived, confined, within a city. So much emotion - too much; too much, sometimes, many times, as I went beyond the limits of what I in my arrogance had assumed was my calm, reflective, self to find such passion - and, sometimes, such anger and annoyance - as perplexed me. For days, a kind of restraint - but then feelings would burst forth to leave me wondering and, sometimes, ashamed. What was I to do as she in her inner pain and torment verbally lashed out? I know what I should have done - been more patient; more supportive; more loving; placing her feelings, her life, before my own. But I made excuses for my failings here, not knowing the depth of her despair even though I who loved her should have known this, felt this. I made excuses for my selfishness, and listened to her Doctor; to others; to my sometimes selfish desires, when I should have listened to her far more.
Thus do I feel and now know my own stupidity for my arrogant, vain, belief that I could help, assist, change what was. No blame for me, her relatives say - but I know my blame, my shame, my failure, here. Thus am I fully humbled by my own lack of insight; by my lack of knowing; by an understanding of my selfishness and my failure - knowing myself now for the ignorant, arrogant person I was, and am.
How hypocritical to teach, to preach, through writings, feeling as I do now the suffering of words, for she whom I loved killed herself only hours after I had left. Killed herself - only hours after I had left, despite her pleading for me to stay. There are no words to describe my blame; no words - for I had gone for a selfish break, to walk in the fields of the Farm.
So I am lost, bereft; guilty, crying, mourning the loss of her beauty, her life, her love, Never again to hold her hand; to embrace her. Never again to share a smile; a peaceful moment; our dream of being together in our home. The fault is mine, and I have to carry this knowledge of unintentionally aiding the ending of a life, this burden, and the guilt, hoping, praying, that somehow, sometime, somewhere I can give some meaning to her life, and perhaps live without ever again causing any suffering to any living thing. Or should I, out of honour, ease this all-consuming pain and guilt by joining my beloved? I do not know; cannot decide. I miss her so much, so deeply, my mind suffused with images of what I did and did not do and should have done. If only I had not gone - or gone back to sit with her in that small garden as she wished.....
I shall never be the same again, deeply knowing that I do not understand.
DW Myatt, 30 May 2006