Forgiveness is not possible July 13, 2012
By far this is the most painful of all the poems she has
directed at me to date, partly because it is dismissive, and in some ways
inaccurate, and uses some of my own statements taken out of context against me.
I need to resist trying to defend myself here and attempt to
focus completely on the statements she is attempting to make, dealing later in
other pages of this journal in an attempt to set the record straight.
Right from the opening lines, she dismisses the need for
forgiveness, largely because she said it would imply the possibility of a “next
step” or somehow getting back to a previous stage before all the hostility
transpired, when it is clear that is not possible.
While the poem does not explicitly say so, there is no going
back, too many bad feelings, too many unforgivable things said.
She describes the “ugly mornings” and the “sweat-streaked
days of locking and unlocking” her door.
The implication here is fear of violence, something she
alluded to in an earlier poem as if such a thing had already happened, when it
never had.
It appears, this fear comes from past experiences, creating
a false narrative and paranoia about what she envisions might be possible again.
The poem uses an odd phrase: “Bargaining with God and
country” to be left alone. At which point, she quotes an email I sent after she
had threatened me and gave me a list of demands.
I had told her I had no hard feelings over the threat, and
understood her need to protect herself (even if there was no reason to and even
though when I said it I knew she had altered our many text exchanges to imply
my saying things I never did, much as she had done to the text message from her
New York stalker, leaving out all of her side of the conversation, suggesting
she had egged him on into saying things she later used against him.
Her poem takes on an aloof tone, a dismissive air of moral superiority,
saying she could care less about my having hard feelings when she had lived in
fear for so many weeks and lived through so many sleepless nights.
In one section of the poem, she projected her belief that I
believed her past experiences (with many stalkers) had toughened her, or as she
put it “seasoned” her, projecting the belief that I assumed she had no
feelings.
Again, with a hard tone bordering on arrogance, flatly
states: “To want to be left alone is not a feeling”
At this point, she
broadens the scope of the poem to include all those others in the past she had
forgiven, people who were actually shocked by that fact, then quotes a close
friend, perhaps one of her angels as asking how she could forgive them when
they hurt her.
She said they (we) hurt themselves, and if we stopped to
thin at all, there should have been no need for forgiveness in the first place.
In other words, we (the collective) brought it on ourselves,
and yet in a brief consolidatory tone, she points out that forgiveness is a way
of life, and there would be no need for it if we all just left her alone.
The poem structure goes from specifically speaking to me as
an individual to a more generic group which I served as an example, and ends speaking
directly to me again.
Unlike some of her previous angry poems, her rage is
controlled, she comes off as sounding reasonable, explaining how she suffered,
and how much she feared.
Forgiveness is the theme or the lack of need for it.
She clearly needs to put the whole affair behind her, and
makes it clear any effort on her part to offer forgiveness would suggest some
hope for a future between us, which she state’s quite frankly, doesn’t exist.
Nothing can go back to what it was, too much water under the
bridge.
Then in an arrogant, nearly God-like tone – like a priest ending
a sermon at the end a mass, she says, “You were forgiven long ago, as you
should have done yourself. Now Go!”
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