Is she there? Has she written? It's all that's on my mind. I'm consumed by a desire to walk back into port and find post from her. Literally every single time I'm walking into a sunset, I'm reminded that the reason to not pitch camp is so we can make it a few miles closer to a chance to hear from her. I'm consumed. I'm eaten away. I'm raw with emotion.
I've written her every single day, in my journal and in letters home. I've whispered her name in my sleep to remind myself that she is real, just at the darkest hour of night when all seems a dream. Just when the jungle calls fill my head, she is the only voice that stays. When the sun comes up and light appears, I've had her light to write by for hours. She illuminates my hands and heart that I may write even when the way to walk is unclear.
And every time I get back to port after so many untold days in the wilderness and jungle, I'm crushed that she hasn't written me. Smashed. Pasted. Powder. I feel a root in a pestle upon whom the last mortar strike has come, and I'm left split open and minced to dry. Tremendous fear and anxiety wash over me. What does it betoken, this silence? Has the post come to a different port? Have they lost her letters? (and an even darker fear I won't let myself say, lest it become true--has she not even written?) My light extinguished, I pick up my tools and head back into the wild.
But then, night lasts not forever. My light comes back. Maybe she was detained, running to the last ship here, carrying a bundle of letters to send to me, each one filled with her words--glorious words to me. The sunrise of her love fills my heart and soul with no beckoning rays of her own to add. I don't need the physical evidence to remember her love for me. I'm sure there's some excuse. I will write her anon.
I am proof of the age old words: Hope springs eternal in the human breast.
-- Henry Morton Stanley
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Seriously, this guy may have been a stinker and a racist, but he knew how to love a woman. You should read up on it--he would go for years carrying a torch for a woman, even with no post and no proof of her requiting love for him.
ReplyDeleteAnd then, more often than not, she would have married when he returned to England years later.
That's so . . . much pain. Oh. Ouch.
So . . . did he really know how to love a woman, or did he know how to pull as much angst and drama out of an infatuation as humanly possible?
ReplyDeleteIf he'd known how to love a woman, would he really have been "a stinker and a racist"? If he'd known what love really was, would he have wasted it on any pretty face he found, especially when she apparently gave no evidence of requiting that love?
I know what it is to love someone and not be loved in return. I know how it feels to see someone confused and embarrassed by your freight train of ridiculousness and still somehow hope that you aren't seeing what you see. I know how easy it is to want to cast yourself in every direction and hope that somehow, some way, someone will see worth in you, even if you are "a stinker and a racist."
I know from experience that such things are not to be tolerated.
I feel sorry for the guy, but I also find myself with the overwhelming urge to tell him to grow up.
Henry Morton Stanley was only partly responsible for his racism. I mean, if you found out that cars were sentient, you would feel bad. I feel that's kind of how it was for some people. Maybe not him, though. He was . . . a little extreme with his racism.
ReplyDeleteAnd love IS mutually exclusive. I know how to love God, but I cannot love my enemy like I ought. I don't think it's fair to assume love is perfect in human form.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't feel bad if I discovered that cars are sentient because I treat Gerti with respect. But I do get what you're saying. I realize that I cannot judge HMS by the standards by which I judge myself.
ReplyDeleteIf you cannot love your enemy like you ought, then why would God ask you to do it? (Perhaps because He showed us how, gave us a manual, and even works in and through us to do it for us?)
I'm not assuming love is perfect in human form, but that only reinforces my belief that HMS didn't know how to love a woman. How could he?
Well, it's like a painting that a child makes: you know it sucks but you love it anyway. In this way, HMS loved.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't think we can love our enemies correctly. We're superbroken people. God has to do it through us. Much like everything.
So HMS did not love her as he would an equal (makes sense given the time period)? I don't know. I'm sorry for his pain, but I can also understand her behavior. I must admit I empathize more with her. At the end of each day, I often find people are both somewhat right and somewhat wrong, and no one wins.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course God has to do it through us. He "works in us both to will and to do His good pleasure." Yet He still doesn't MAKE us do anything, so . . . we love by proxy?
Maybe he didn't love her as an equal, but I was talking about loving your enemy. You can't love them properly, but you try anyway.
ReplyDeleteI believe you can love them properly. I think I have. I mean, it was God, I think, but the enemy thanked me for loving her when she thought she was unlovable.
ReplyDelete