Ihmeelliset ihmiset - Richard Bach ja Leslie Parrish, maailman kaunein erokirje
Ote kirjasta Silta yli ikuisuuden - Richard Bach.
Wednesday evening 12/21
Dearest
Richard,
It's so difficult to know how and where
to begin. I've been thinking long and hard through many ideas trying
to find a way...
I finally struck one little thought, a
musical metaphor, through which I have been able to think clearly and
find understanding, if not satisfaction, and I want to share it with
you. So please bear with me while we have yet another music lesson.
The most commonly used form for large
classical works is sonata form. It is the basis of almost all
symphonies and concertos. It consists of three main sections: the
exposition or opening, in which little ideas, themes, bits and pieces
are set forth and introduced to each other; the development, in which
these tiny ideas and motifs are explored to their fullest, expanded,
often go from major (happy) to minor (unhappy) and back again, and
are developed and woven together in greater complexity until at last
there is: the recapitulation, in which there is a restatement, a
glorious expression of the full, rich maturity to which the tiny
ideas have grown through the development process.
How does this apply to us, you may ask,
if you haven't already guessed.
I see us stuck in a never-ending
opening. At first, it was the real thing, and sheer delight. It is
the part of a relationship in which you are at your best: fun,
charming, excited, exciting, interesting, interested. It is a time
when you're most comfortable and most lovable because you do not feel
the need to mobilize your defenses, so your partner gets to cuddle a
warm human being instead of a giant cactus. It is a time of delight
for both, and it's no wonder you like openings so much you strive to
make your life a series of them.
But beginnings cannot be prolonged
endlessly; they cannot simply state and restate and restate
themselves. They must move on and develop-or die of boredom. Not so,
you say. You must get away, have changes, other people, other places
so you can come back to a relationship as if it were new, and have
constant new beginnings.
We moved on to a protracted series of
reopenings. Some were caused by business separations that were
necessary, but unnecessarily harsh and severe for two so close as we.
Some were manufactured by you in order
to provide still more opportunities to return to the newness you so
desire.
Obviously, the development section is
anathema to you. For it is where you may discover that all you have
is a collection of severely limited ideas that won't work no matter
how much creativity you bring to them or even worse for you -that you
have the makings of something glorious, a symphony, in which case
there is work to be done: depths must be plumbed, and separate
entities carefully woven together, the better to glorify themselves
and each other. I suppose it is analogous to that moment in writing
when a book idea must be/cannot be run from.
We have undoubtedly gone further than
you ever intended to go. And we have stopped far short of what I saw
as our next logical and lovely steps. I have seen development with
you continually arrested, and have come to believe that we will never
make more than sporadic attempts at all our learning potential, our
amazing similarities of interest, no matter how many years we may
have-because we will never have unbroken time together. So the growth
we prize so highly and know is possible becomes impossible.
We have both had a vision of something
wonderful that awaits us. Yet we cannot get there from here. I am
faced with a solid wall of defenses and you have the need to build
more and still more. I long for the richness and fullness of further
development, and you will search for ways to avoid it as long as
we're together. Both of us are frustrated; you unable to go back, I
unable to go forward, in a constant state of struggle, with clouds
and dark shadows over the limited time you allow us.
To feel your constant resistance to me,
to the growth of this something wonderful, as if I and it were
something horrible -to experience the various forms the resistance
takes, some of them cruel often causes me pain on one level or
another.
I have a record of our time together,
and have taken a long and honest look at it. It has saddened me, and
even shocked me, but it has been helpful in facing the truth. I look
back to the days in early July, and the seven weeks that followed, as
our only truly happy period. That was the opening, and it was
beautiful. Then there were the separations with their fierce and, to
me, inexplicable cutoffs-and the equally fierce avoidance-resistance
on your returns.
Away and apart or together and apart,
it is too unhappy. I am watching me become a creature who cries a
lot, a creature who even must cry a lot, for it almost seems that
pity is necessary before kindness is possible. And I know I have not
come this far in life to become pitiful.
To be told that canceling your date to
help me when I was in a state of crisis "wouldn't work for you"
brought the truth crushing down on me with the force of an avalanche.
Facing facts as honestly as I can, I know I cannot continue, no
matter how much I might wish to do so; I cannot bend further.
I hope you will not see this as the
breaking of an agreement, but rather the continuation of the many,
many endings you have begun. I think it is something we both know
must be. I must accept that I have failed in my effort to let you
know the joys of caring.
Richard, my precious friend, this is
said softly, even tenderly and lovingly. And the soft tones do not
camouflage an underlying anger: they are real. There are no
accusations, no blames or faults. I am simply trying to understand,
and to stop the pain. I am stating what I have been forced to accept:
that you and I are never going to have a development, much less the
glorious climactic expression of a relationship grown to full
blossom.
I have felt if anything in my life
deserved departure from previously established patterns, going beyond
all known limitations, this relationship did. I suppose I might be
justified in feeling humiliated about the lengths to which I have
gone to make it work. Instead, I feel proud of myself and glad to
know I recognized the rare and lovely opportunity we had while we had
it, and gave all I could, in the purest and highest sense, to
preserve it. I am comforted by this now. In this awful moment of
ending, I can honestly say I do not know of one other thing I might
do to get us to that beautiful future we could have had.
Despite the pain, I'm happy to have
known you in this special way, and will always treasure the time
we've had together. I have grown with you, and learned much from you,
and I know I have made major positive contributions to you. We are
both better people for having touched one another.
At this late juncture, it occurs to me
that a chess metaphor might also be useful. Chess is a game in which
each party has its own singular objective even as it engages the
other; a mid-game in which a struggle develops and intensifies and
bits and pieces of each side are lost, both sides diminished; an
end-game in which one traps and paralyzes the other.
I think you see life as a chess game; I
see it as a sonata. And because of these differences, both the king
and the queen are lost, and the song is silenced.
I am still your friend, as I know you
are mine. I send this with a heart full of the deep and tender love
and high regard you know I have for you, as well as profound sorrow
that an opportunity so filled with promise, so rare and so beautiful,
had to go unfulfilled.
x
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