I do not deserve you.
I think I have taken everything I truly valued and torn it up like a child in a tantrum, so filled with fury I must make all my internal pain external.
There is no excuse for it.
Is my mind lost? Will I be caught up in my own worst acts for ever? I do not understand why I am compelled to do the things I do. You do not deserve it. I do not know who does.
My father. Claudine.
My mother, even. She tried her best, but it hurt to be loved by her.
Or perhaps no one. Perhaps blame creates nothing but more anger.
But can I forgive? Should I? Why must I? Why are we told to forgive those who trespass against us? Should they not suffer? If we do not believe in blame and punishment, then why do we have lawyers, courts, prisons? Why has the gibbet long stood atop the hill? Why do we even now send people to their deaths for their actions?
Why is my pain not worthy of retribution?
If I am lost already, why should I not bring those who hurt me along with me into Hell?
What a fool you are, dear Cecilia. I have plunged you into Tartarus for no crime other than loving me.
For that, there can be no forgiveness.
I must accept my fate now. Perhaps this is all there is.
I have failed. I cannot see through the revenge tasked to me.
I have failed at it all.
[Here the letter is abandoned.]
*
[This, written hastily, with a shaking hand, undated and received on the twelfth of December.]
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken’d from the dream of life;
’Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings.Wedecay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
*
14thDecember 1898
Dear Odette,
