At Least Afloat

Dear Sea of Troubles, as Hamlet liked to call you,

I wonder that I do write to you, because you are with me all the time, inextricably bound, as I am bound to Lord knows where, cast out on this vessel as I am, until I meet the Sun in where it sets eternally. Or maybe I don’t, and I just chase it always, like the Little Prince, but I will no longer be in anyone’s view. To wit, you know my thoughts.

I suppose, in the style of the good and the great of days gone by, I write a public letter, as if addressed to a private audience, for philosophical reasons, but I hope you find me less flippant than Voltaire, somewhat softer than Diderot.

Why is it that some days I am most myself when I talk to no one? Why do I seek out solitude, but then suffer from its effects? Why can I no longer find it in my heart to pretend? And why do I have the strange impression that I miss myself?

I had the fortune, as you know, to be given a mirror in the form of another person, and the mask I wore in life as on the stage, slipped. Since this is now a memory, freshly stowed away in the box, I struggle to find the peace I thought I once had. Or maybe it wasn’t a peace – maybe it was a defiance. Tell me where I am, and maybe I shall be less lonely.

I know someone else, who perhaps isn’t as a mirror, but who feels like home, or a sister vessel. Whatever they do, I know they will be well. Communication is unnecessary, almost. Anything I say has already been said, or written in writing only we know how to read. Is it enough to live like this – to know they sail, and are bound on a good journey, but that I won’t see them often? Yet, when in their company, Armadas could surround us, and I swear I feel we would be fine? The twine of Fate binds in parallel, but will lines ever meet? Words are poor things in such description. I wonder, in layman terms, if you can know a soulmate, and never end up together?

And then, can I wonder any such thing, with my confused outlook on romantic love? Did I ever truly experience it? Perhaps I am as good as the character I wrote in my novel, who doesn’t understand it. Mine is not to run and sacrifice for a pair of eyes that speak, but for hands that give, and words that console. I should give my life to my friends and family, and my art and my work.

And Life, or Sea, yours is a love I cannot dispute, because you look knowingly, and don’t answer, and I still run to Weightless by All Time Low about to kick up a pile of autumnal leaves on the way to work, trudge back to Anyone by Ross Ainslie and Jarlath Henderson with the sun tearing up the sky in splendour behind me, and I smile. Alone, my friends and family miles away, my colleagues commuting back to theirs, the lonely sister boat making its course elsewhere (surely and magnificently), but glad. The sky never truly frowned on me, and, touch wood, never will. The sky grows rose scales in the morning, and burns before night, rests when it is grey, weeps, and can wear azure cloaks, veils of stars, shy clouds, a radiant sun. I ramble. You smile.

Tell me, how do I do better for everyone? How do I utilise the gifts you have given me best in this quest? How do I sleep through the nights without waking at the anxious hour between 4 and 5am, when the veil into sorrow and potential loss slips? How do I not simply avoid regret, but embrace what I know to be true, and how do I know this?

(Most of all, how do I not make hashes of such letters, and then criticise myself?)

Yours, O Teacher, Muse, Song,

Yours for the guiding,

Bella