Hello darling, I'm back, I think, from the abyss. Here is a huge hug for you and a big kiss hello. I've missed you, in more ways one than one - a little distant because so distracted. But I do feel that I'm back now, with you, and for you. I still feel a lot of anxiety, heart racing, shallow breathing, when my mind veers off the cliff into that subject area, but I made concerted efforts all day long to just keep moving. That's the only thing that made me feel better today, racing around madly, like as in that Picasso collage, keeping ahead of the pain. And it worked, it did. I took three walks, including one this morning at the conservation area, where I haven't been in a while. It was around eight o'clock, I had the huge expanse of field and views of mountain and brilliant clear blue sky, not a cloud in it, all to myself. And you will be amazed at this, or perhaps think - what took you so long? -- but for one of the few times in my life, I actually prayed, asked for help. I called up to the sky, and I burst into hot dry sobs for a few moments, but my "prayers flew up," I think. I just felt that out there on a limb with all this, nothing more in myself, that I could pull out to feel better. And, really, I can't stand it when (as far as I'm concerned) people take the Lord's name in vain, and credit him with some trivial absurdity. But I really did feel that I needed some extra support, some source of strength, insight, clarity, peace, whatever -- from some source that I couldn't quite summon from my own inner resources.

Oh sweetheart, it was a beautiful day, truly a gift. I'm glad I kept moving, and it was a good day to, sun brilliant, air cold but crisp and energizing. I walked around here too, including down (and later up) a beautiful needle-strewn path that leads down a steep ridge surrounded by ancient spiring woods, at the far back of the churchyard and cemetery. The path had been off-bounds for a while, but at some point in recent months, someone or a crew came with a chainsaw and cleared an enormous pine that had toppled waist-high across it in a storm last summer. I am so glad to have that peaceful, meditative path back - it is like being in an intimate cathedral to journey along the rise in the encircling hush of towering pines.

***
I don't plan to talk about the "revelation" too much longer, I think I've said just about everything I have to say about how I felt learning about it all, and examining different facets of it. But one thing I'll add is this -- as a young woman dating him, I couldn't have seen it coming, the type of adult life he ended up choosing for himself. When we were together, we had a really wonderful relationship. It was a very long courtship, months (okay, about two) before we went to bed. We loved each other - not just me, he loved me too - I'm certain of it. We had wonderful times with his family, as well as by ourselves. I never ever had the sense, while we were dating, that he was two-timing me on the side. Of course, we were both single. Also, we were each living in our respective parents' houses. Really - I have wonderful memories of the whole thing. There wasn't pain in it at all, except as his leavetaking approached, and then he left, and then I was - at that very moment - devastatingly alone, considering the utter bliss I'd experienced with him, and I don't mean just in bed, I mean we had a lot of fun together. But people break up, especially at that age, he went off to graduate school, and I, a year afterward, to college... We were young, just setting out. Just Kids -- to quote Patti Smith.

***
I think that's one reason - especially since I haven't seen him in 35 years now - that I find the - trajectory? - of how things are, or went for him -- so shocking, even if I knew that he wasn't exactly the 'faithful' type. I just didn't realize the nature & extent of it. And it doesn't compute with what I had experienced with him, back in 1975-76. Not at all, I couldn't have predicted it.

I couldn't have predicted that I was dating a budding - that he would turn into - a Darryl Van Horne. And not only because I was naive, or that the novel didn't even get written and get published til years after, in 1984.

I don't know -- time warp, so "Me Generation," seventies/eighties. Okay fine. Although another really odd thought I keep coming up against with him, is how reflective of our culture he is, it seems to me, in the patterns of his behavior; some of his theories too oddly reminiscent to me of a sort of America-ascendant imperialism that justifies all, wrack & ruin, in quest of conquest-

I'm getting far afield. But take it as a good sign that I'm feeling a little more dispassionate...

Sweetheart, I hope all is well & happy with you, I really do. Big hugs & kisses wherever you are. I think of you so much, and I have not told you enough what an incredible, abiding comfort you have been to me...

xoxo