Surviving the Titanic April 23, 2013

 


Her latest posted poem makes me think of some of the last scenes of the 1997 film “Titanic” – not the disaster stuff, but that moment when she is floating on the debris and her lover is in the water beside her, slowly drifting apart.

Her poem is about resignation, finally accepting the reality of a situation, and the next step in the slow dissolution of a relationship she once had high hopes for.

This moves beyond the point of her clinging to hope, or even begging for him to reconsider. She accepts the romance as a lost cause and admits that the affair has had less desirable side effects.

She opens the poem asking, “Where does the dreaming go,” after it gets smacked by reality, turning it into dust.

She clearly feels embarrassed by how she fooled herself and how she ought to have known better – optimistic thoughts she says now she had no right to think.

Again, we come to the bitter bit where she made assumptions about him, and his marriage, and how her relationship could go on, sneaking affection behind the back of his wife, calling it “The luxury of a double life,” something of a fantasy she made up in her own head.

And then in an even more bitter bit, she regrets the trust  she had, and regrets thinking there was more to the relationship than there was.

This is among some of the most painful writing of hers I have read so far.

She clearly believed he loved her as much as she did him, and seems to admit now that for him this was just another affair, a flirtation from which he can easily walk away.

The whole thing comes with the painful baggage, which gets dragged behind them: “Labored consequences” which she suspected from the beginning when she struggled to keep this as an affair of the mind, knowing even back then any physical contact would destroy his comfortable world.

She has no right to know the details or to expect anything in return, and while it may seem like she is taking responsibility when she says “It’s my fault,” she’s not.

She blames herself for expecting more than what this turned out to be.

There is no contrition here, nor perhaps should there be.

She walked into this with her eyes closed, or with visions of a great romance, and came away with something that feels just a little dirty.

And it’s her fault for expecting things to turn out some other way.

Ion this poem, she Titanic has sunk and the great romance an earlier chapter has given away to the icy reality to two people forced to go their separate ways.

While not said, the tone of the poem suggests that the affair has been discovered, and he chose to try to save himself, leaving her to drift of in her own guilt.

No, not guilt, more sad reflection of how gullible she was, and how she got taken in by a vision that wasn’t real, and with her experiences, she should have known better.

She caused her own hurt, and that’s a big part of this tragedy.

 

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