In private thoughts my insecurity runs rampant, plowing down dozens of built-up reassurances that stand between confidence and cowardice. The battle which ensues is one among me, myself and I, each of us the murderer, the martyr and the enslaved. A combatant against myself, I am my own self-inflicted enemy, the gilded dagger and seeping wound in one.
Hey Jen. I don’t want to ask you anything about Casey. I know you and her are really good friends, so I wouldn’t do that to you. I am done with Casey. I still love her, yes, but I’m moving on. I just have things that I want to tell you. I can definitely understand that you think I would be calling you to get some information or something. The bottom line is that I know that Casey was cheating on me or thinking about it. I know she was interested in John. I told her I always wanted honesty and no secrets between us. Well, that’s definitely not what happened. She never told me the truth of her and John. When I talked to her when I came back, she had definitely changed. She no longer showed any interest in me whatsoever and she had this look of hate for me. I had never felt hurt like that before in my life. I also know about the story she is writing about it. Her love for me was false. Nonetheless I wish her the best. I no longer want her back, and I know she is done with me, so it works out. Anyway, I don’t want to call you to pick questions at you. If you don’t want me to call, I can understand. Thanks for talking at least.
After I read his message, I confronted him about his strategies, and he defended himself with ferocity. He pointed his finger at me and bestowed on me all his sleepless nights, anger and tears. I made no effort to defend myself, for I felt his convictions were grounded enough to condemn me. I let him loose all his frustration on me, retribution for what I’d done to him.
My lover chastised me for it. He said I have little value in myself, a low esteem that not only puzzled and disturbed him but also hurt us. My own injury and private suffering pushed him further away from me. He asked me why I allowed one man to make such a heavy impression on my image, why I didn’t stand up for myself, and the only thought that ran through my head was, “It was not unwarranted.”
For all the hurt and disappointment that I’ve unleashed, for all that which I called upon myself, I deserve a harsher punishment and the choice to sacrifice myself for a better person’s happiness.
But for the sake of my newborn love, I promised him to free myself of guilt, and he, in turn, promised patience.
At the time, I was reading Khalil Gibran’s The Beloved. I didn’t know it, but I’d happened across the one man who could alleviate me of my culpability through the story of another woman, a woman named Rose al-Hani.
Gibran visits his friend in Lebanon, a man who has recently lost his wife to another man.
He says, “If your portion of existence is a bird that you love, if you feed it with the grains of your heart, give it to drink from the light of your eyes, make your ribs to be its cage and your inner being its nest—then, if while you are looking at your bird and bathing its feathers with the rays of your soul, it flees from you and flies away circling above the clouds, if it then descends into another nest and there is no way to make it return … what then, sir, would you do? Tell me what you would do and where you would find patience and consolation, how you would revive your hopes and aspirations? … This is all that I am able to say. Don’t ask me any more, and do not mention my affliction aloud. Rather, leave it to be a mute affliction. Perhaps it will grow in silence and kill me and give me peace.”
With understanding, I recognized the friend to be the voice of my Heart. What ungrateful and sinful wretchedness! speaks my conscience.
A few days later, Gibran meets the adulterous mistress, but finds that she is more than he expected.
“A woman’s happiness is not to be found in a man’s wealth or in obedience to him, nor even in his generosity and kindness. It is to be found in the love that binds her spirit to his, a love that pours her emotions into his heart, that makes them one limb of the body of life, one word upon the lips of God,” she said.
“When this painful truth had become clear to my sight, I felt like a thief in Rasheed Nu’man’s house, eating his bread and then lurking in the darkness of the night. I knew that every day I spent near him was a ghastly lie, a lie that hypocrisy wrote in letters of fire upon my brow for heaven and earth to read, for I could not give him the love of my heart in return for his generosity, nor could I bestow the affection of my soul upon him in payment for his sincerity and goodness. I tried, futilely I tried to learn to love him, but I could not, for love is a power that creates our hearts. Our hearts cannot create love … Love descends into our spirits by a decree of God, not by human intention. Thus, for two long years I remained in that man’s house, envying the meadow larks their freedom, though the daughters of my own kind envied me for the prison in which I lived. Like a mother whose only child has died, I mourned the heart that had been conceived by knowledge, that had been sickened by law, and that died every day of hunger and thirst.
“On one of those black days, I stared from behind the darkness and beheld a diaphanous ray of light shining from my eye upon a youth walking alone on the paths of life, a youth who lived alone with his papers and books in his small house. I shut my eyes so as not to see that ray and said to my soul, ‘Your lot is the darkness of the tomb. Do not covet the light!’ Then I cried out and heard an exalted song, a song whose sweetness made my limbs tremble and whose purity seized my whole being. I covered my ears and said to my soul, ‘Your lot is the hellfire that roars in your ears. Do not desire song!’ I closed my eyes so as not to see and I blocked my ears so as not to hear, but my eyes still saw that ray, though they were closed, and my ears still heard that song, though blocked. At first I felt the terror of the poor man who finds a jewel near the palace of the prince. In his fear he dares not pick it up, yet his poverty will not let him leave it. I wept like a thirsty man who has seen a sweet spring guarded by wild beasts and who throws himself on the ground to wait and despair.
“Some people come forth from eternity and then return to it without having tasted of true life. They cannot apprehend the essence of a woman’s pain when her soul stands between the man she loves by the decree of heaven and the man to whom she is bound by earthly law. It is a tragedy written with a woman’s blood and tears, but a man reads it as comedy because he does not understand it. And should he come to understand it, his laughter becomes debauchery and cruelty. His anger pours down upon the woman’s head like the fires of hell, and he fills her ears with blasphemy.
“It is a story of pain. Dark nights act it out within the breast of a woman who finds her body chained to the bed of a man she knew as a husband before she ever knew the meaning of marriage. She sees her spirit fluttering around another man whom she loves with all the love that is within her spirit and with all the purity and beauty that is within love. It is a fearful struggle that began when weakness began in woman and strength in man. It will not end until the days of the servitude of weakness to strength have ended. It is a terrifying war between the corrupt laws of men and the sacred affections of the heart. Yesterday I was driven into this battlefield and nearly died of fear, nearly melted away in tears, but I stood up and cast off the timidity of the daughters of my kind. I freed my wings from the bonds of weakness and submission and rose in flight through the air of love and freedom. Now I am happy, near this man. He and I came out from the hand of God as a single spark before the ages began. There is no power in the world able to deny my happiness, for it arose from the embrace of two spirits linked by mutual understanding and shadowed by love.
“Yesterday I was like an inviting table, and Rasheed Bey would come to me whenever he felt a need to taste of it, but our souls remained apart like two lowly servants. When I comprehended this knowledge, I hated the servitude. Though I tried to submit to what they call ‘my lot,’ I could not. My spirit refused to spend all of life bowing before a fearful idol raised by dark generations of the past, an idol which they made law. So I broke my bonds, but I did not cast them away until I heard love calling and saw my soul prepared for a journey.
“This is my story, O man. This is my justification before heaven and earth. I repeat it, I sing it out … This is the difficult path that I travel to reach the summit of my happiness. If death should come now and snatch me away, my spirit will stand before the high throne without fear or dread—indeed, with joy and hope. My conscience will be unwrapped before the Most Great Judge and it will be seen to be pure as snow, for I have done nothing that was not willed by a soul that God split off from His own Self. I have followed only the call of the heart and the echo of the angels’ song.”
Such fervent beauty and passion in her voice! I found that I could relate to her, I could hear my own mind in her convictions, and the dawn of understanding broke on my horizon.
I committed myself to a good man. In my youth I gave myself to him without knowing my own identity first, and in doing so, I came to resent the choice I’d made. Honor and remembrance, instead of law, bound me tightly to him, though I dreamed of someone else. Miscommunication proved just the escape, and I, my hopes in tow behind me, departed from the glass house that I’d made.
I’ve not been able to forgive myself for what I’ve done to him or how I’ve let him down. There was no doubt he had been wronged.
After Gibran leaves the house of Rose al-Hani and her lover, he reflects on her story “and all the beginnings and endings entwined within it.” He “remembered Rasheed Bey Nu’man and saw once more the agony of his despair and unhappiness."
“He is a wronged and wretched man, but does heaven hear him if he stands before it wronged and complaining of Rose al-Hani? Did that woman sin against him when she left him and followed her won freedom? … Which of the two is the wrongdoer and which the one wronged? Which would you say is guilty and which innocent?”
Who among the pair is evil or wicked or deserves the most blame? Is there one among us lovers that can point their sinless finger at me and call me adulterous or cheating? Forget what you know of fault and blameworthiness, for in love there is only fate.
Forgive yourself and my divided heart; my only crime was to love two men. For this, I no longer feel remorse. Instead I feel overjoyed that this feeling can be distributed in such richness and proportion. I am freed of guilt at last; my spirit soars.
i likes it alot. I am very glad to hear all this stuff. I is happy :)
happy happy joy joy
btw, i wont be ordering coffee at ur shop.
Posted by: yellowgirl | Thursday, 08 June 2006 at 08:56 AM