Hey, everyone

Well, purplelife, I’m not someone you know (yet), not suicidal or depressed myself, and I’ve got a pretty vocal voice and apt ears…so there we are, a good start, it’d seem. 🙂

Anyway, as you can tell from my name, I’m a lover of literature (I want to be a writer someday, part of the reason I’m here, I find folks here fascinating to talk to, sometimes even inspiring, and if I can somehow help in my own small way, then I should and try to.) Maybe less apparent from that name is the fact I love a show called “Daria” (however old you are, you may have heard of it, it was and remains a pretty popular, classic show with my generation.) How do these seemingly-unrelated bits pertain?

Well, I’ve never been in love–never have been, likley never will be, I’m just not that kind of person, but even still, as a fan of literature, I know Tennyson quite well, he’s one of the most famous poets of the 1800s and one of the more widely quoted poets in the English language…

If you’ve ever heard the phrase “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” that’s Tennyson.

And if THAT was what I left you with, just that same tired quote everyone spouts, that wouldn’t be much help by itself–hence my referencing Daria. It comes up in an episode, that quote, and Daria–the same sort of sarcastic person I am–has to talk about it, and says, to paraphrase, that what Tennyson “means” is that love is painful, personal, and you risk a lot putting yourself out there, but the rewards it offers when it works are so great that even at the risk of terrible pain, still we love, and so even losing love, it’s better to have had that ecstasy at some point in our lives and now feel pain afterword than to have never felt it at all.

So it’s understandable that you’d feel depressed–it’s something perfectly understandable to be depressed about, losing that great feeling of ecstasy, combined with the pain that follows such a loss.

Even so, however, you will forever at least have those times of past happiness, that is etched in sturdier stuff than stone, it’s etched in time and no one can take that from you–those memories are yours forever. The memory of breaking up, true, will also be with you forever…and feeling pain for a while is understandable, and even cathartic and cleansing, but when that ceases to be the case, when that pain no longer is cleansing or cathartic but only combustible and cruel, then it’s no longer helpful to you, and it’s time to try and let go of it.

That’s easier said than done–but I believe you can do it. You’re a richer person, purplelife, for having been ij love, even if it didn’t work out. Love is such a thing that is so intimate and so vitally life-changing, so deep and immense and overflowing that it has certainly bestowed upon you such a fertile personality and such depth of mind and character that, even if you cannot imagine it, or see how you can be fuller when maybe you feel so much emptier, I’d ask that you to ask yourself (as asking for a leap of blind faith is no way to start a trusting relationship entered into with open eyes) if you can see in yourself that fact, if you can see how much richer you are as a person just for being ABLE to fall in love at all, to fall in love and devote yourself as intimately, as intensely, as selflessly and wholly as love requires…

I’d ask if you can see how even THAT has made you a richer, more beautiful and whole person, even in the midst of feeling so broken right now.

If you can–you deserve to feel that way, and remember that, build off of that feeling, and move forward with all the strength you can muster.

If you can’t, if you cannot see that, that’s fine–tell me, why do you feel that’s not the case?

In EITHER case…

You have an ear of mine–two, in fact!–so whatever you want to talk about, whatever still feels off, or even if you want to talk about something completely unrelated, sports, politics, literature, the weather, just to take your mind off things, please feel free to respond (or ask for my email/Facebook, etc.)

In closing, I don’t need to give an PSA and say how dangerous anorexia is; you’re not a stupid person, or a shallow person, that much I can tell, so I won’t waste your time…instead, I began with Tennyson, so I’ll end with him, and some words the man wrote which have helped many for over a century now, inspired poets and politicians and athletes and artists allike, and then just the everyday person as well.

I hope you can take something from it, take care, and let me know. 🙂

“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

If you take the Tennyson ideal, then yes–because love isn’t just about you loving him and he loving you back…it’s about having the capacity to love AT ALL, to have been able to tap into that feeling and to exhibit that ability, if not for him than for YOURSELF.

Regardless of whether he loved you or not, if you loved him, it shows you ARE capable of loving someone, you DO have that extraordinary capacity to think and feel and be in that rarified way…it DOES make you special, not everyone can feel that way so genuinely. I’m not saying what he did was good or right–it wasn’t, and I’m sorry that you had to go through that. But to say there wasn’t anything special about you obscures two very important facts:

He could have chosen anyone to attempt this wrong experiment with, to test his sexuality, but he chose you–perhaps he felt that you were so wonderful in your own way as a young woman that if he couldn’t love you, he couldn’t love any woman. That was wrong of him to do, to make you his experiment–and you shouldn’t at all think of yourself as “his” or belonging to him in any way–but it makes you anything but ordinary.

Far more importantly, however, is the fact that you had a crush on him, on anyone AT ALL.

It didn’t work out with him, not at all due to your own fault; if the fault was with anyone it was with him, not for his sexuality but for using you in such a way as he did, for which, again, I express my sincerest sorrow at your having had to suffer that at such a young age. (If you are a teenager, by the way, I’m older but not by too much, just an upper-division college student…but in any case, full disclosure on my part, so you know *I* am not hiding anything from you.) 🙂

But the fact it didn’t work out doesn’t mean that love isn’t worth it, or that love doesn’t work…it worked with you, was worth it for you, because on your end it did work, you were and are a loving person, and if you can love someone like him at such a young age, imagine what wonderful people who might want to meet you, know you, love you as you grow and mature into someone who I’m sure will be a very intelligent and caring woman.

Hold onto THAT feeling, the feeling of love that YOU create, that YOU nourished and allowed to bloom within yourself, and keep THAT alive…it’s a young weedy sapling that someday, planted in the right soil, with the right person, may grow again and grow all the better, and THAT is why it is better, for Tennyson, to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all–

Separate your capacity for care and love from your specific capacity to care and love for this specific person…such a separation may hurt, but keeping that capacity and depth that you have alive is so vital…and again, one day, you will, I’m sure meet someone worthwhile, and then you will still have that bit of love you’ve already begun to grow for yourself, and when you feel that way with someone who DOES fully reciprocate your feelings…

THEN it will have been better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all–

The former allows recovery and renewal, the latter does not.

🙂

(And I was Polonius when my high school–back a few years, being in college, lol–did “Hamlet/Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” so we have a common Shakespeare tie…I have that on DVD–the good, uncut, every-line-from-ever-version Branagh version of “Hamlet”–along with 9 other Shakespeare plays, including that famous 1968 version of “Romeo and Juliet” they show in public schools so much…those, and a Charles Dickens Collection, a George Bernard Shaw Collection, a Bronte Sisters Collection, Tess of the D’urbervilles, Sherlock Holmes, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, just a hole bunch…and then a great bookcase of books, as well as old ones–a copy of Shakespeare from 1910 and a copy of Milton from 1874!–and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in the original Spanish, Kafka’s stories in the original German…I’m a literature FIEND, so if you wan to talk literature, I’d love to talk with someone so passionate about it as yourself, it’s my entire life, really….kirkscottychekov@yahoo.com is my email if you like.

Oh–and yeah, Daria was on 5 seasons, late 90s to early 00s, so yeah, a bit early if you’re a teenager, but you can watch it online easily, just go to watchseries.eu, search “Daria” and it comes right up, all 65 episodes…there are two TV movies, but you ahve to go elsewhere to watch those, but if you LOVE literature and especially if you are in high school, I recommend it, I really do.)

🙂

If you take the Tennyson ideal, then yes–because love isn’t just about you loving him and he loving you back…it’s about having the capacity to love AT ALL, to have been able to tap into that feeling and to exhibit that ability, if not for him than for YOURSELF.

Regardless of whether he loved you or not, if you loved him, it shows you ARE capable of loving someone, you DO have that extraordinary capacity to think and feel and be in that rarified way…it DOES make you special, not everyone can feel that way so genuinely. I’m not saying what he did was good or right–it wasn’t, and I’m sorry that you had to go through that. But to say there wasn’t anything special about you obscures two very important facts:

He could have chosen anyone to attempt this wrong experiment with, to test his sexuality, but he chose you–perhaps he felt that you were so wonderful in your own way as a young woman that if he couldn’t love you, he couldn’t love any woman. That was wrong of him to do, to make you his experiment–and you shouldn’t at all think of yourself as “his” or belonging to him in any way–but it makes you anything but ordinary.

Far more importantly, however, is the fact that you had a crush on him, on anyone AT ALL.

It didn’t work out with him, not at all due to your own fault; if the fault was with anyone it was with him, not for his sexuality but for using you in such a way as he did, for which, again, I express my sincerest sorrow at your having had to suffer that at such a young age. (If you are a teenager, by the way, I’m older but not by too much, just an upper-division college student…but in any case, full disclosure on my part, so you know *I* am not hiding anything from you.)

But the fact it didn’t work out doesn’t mean that love isn’t worth it, or that love doesn’t work…it worked with you, was worth it for you, because on your end it did work, you were and are a loving person, and if you can love someone like him at such a young age, imagine what wonderful people who might want to meet you, know you, love you as you grow and mature into someone who I’m sure will be a very intelligent and caring woman.

Hold onto THAT feeling, the feeling of love that YOU create, that YOU nourished and allowed to bloom within yourself, and keep THAT alive…it’s a young weedy sapling that someday, planted in the right soil, with the right person, may grow again and grow all the better, and THAT is why it is better, for Tennyson, to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all–

Separate your capacity for care and love from your specific capacity to care and love for this specific person…such a separation may hurt, but keeping that capacity and depth that you have alive is so vital…and again, one day, you will, I’m sure meet someone worthwhile, and then you will still have that bit of love you’ve already begun to grow for yourself, and when you feel that way with someone who DOES fully reciprocate your feelings…

THEN it will have been better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all–

The former allows recovery and renewal, the latter does not.

(And I was Polonius when my high school–back a few years, being in college, lol–did “Hamlet/Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” so we have a common Shakespeare tie…I have that on DVD–the good, uncut, every-line-from-ever-version Branagh version of “Hamlet”–along with 9 other Shakespeare plays, including that famous 1968 version of “Romeo and Juliet” they show in public schools so much…those, and a Charles Dickens Collection, a George Bernard Shaw Collection, a Bronte Sisters Collection, Tess of the D’urbervilles, Sherlock Holmes, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, just a hole bunch…and then a great bookcase of books, as well as old ones–a copy of Shakespeare from 1910 and a copy of Milton from 1874!–and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” in the original Spanish, Kafka’s stories in the original German…I’m a literature FIEND, so if you wan to talk literature, I’d love to talk with someone so passionate about it as yourself, it’s my entire life, really is my email if you like.

Oh–and yeah, Daria was on 5 seasons, late 90s to early 00s, so yeah, a bit early if you’re a teenager, but you can watch it online easily, just go to watchseries.eu, search “Daria” and it comes right up, all 65 episodes…there are two TV movies, but you have to go elsewhere to watch those, but if you LOVE literature and especially if you are in high school, I recommend it, I really do.)

(Here again in case email is a problem. Sorry for double post.)