When I was in my teens and so in love with love that my heart was broken almost every other day, I stumbled upon a novel that gave such an intense poetic nuance and substance to my pain that I still refer to it after all these years. From Wikipedia:
Damage is a 1991 novel by Josephine Hart about a British politician who, in the prime of life, causes his own downfall through an inappropriate relationship. It was adapted into a film of the same title by Louis Malle in 1992, as well as into an opera (calledDamage, an opera in seven meals) by Greek composer Kharálampos Goyós in 2004.
Today I am lost in a haze of sadness. Today I recognized the symptoms of alcoholism and denial resurface in my blue eyed, golden haired fallen angel like a shark’s fin in the ocean close to a group of unsuspecting swimmers. I remember the screams, the blood, the floating bits of heart flesh that come bubbling up in an otherwise blue ocean of dreams soon after that fin surfaces. My heart refuses to feel that pain again so it goes into an automated process of shutting down and raising shields. As it is, that spiritual shark is circling around the closed underwater dome of my heart, but that dome is not merely closed, it is armed with torpedoes that could turn that shark of a man into sashimi.
There was a full moon in the starless sky. I thought how rarely I had noticed such things. Some deep failure of the soul perhaps. An inherited emptiness. A nothingness passed from generation to generation. A flaw in the psyche, discovered only by those who suffer by it. JOSEPHINE HART – DAMAGE
I could have his soul for breakfast and that particular meal wouldn’t make me anything other that a wise woman tired of going through the same old shit. Souls like his have holes like Swiss Cheese and add a flare to a ham sandwich. I like my souls on sour dough bread with a thin film of Miracle Whip Light mixed with some Honey Dijon Mustard. I’ll have that with a Mimosa and carry on as if nothing happened.
That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive. JOSEPHINE HART – DAMAGE
Like the doomed affair in Damage our relationship is obviously fraught with danger because I am the adult child of an alcoholic and he is once again plunged into the depths of his disease. And yet, love draws us together as it has over 18 years. But as big girls know … love is never enough … it just makes it hurt even more than it could.
I always recognize the foces that will shape my life. I let them do their work. Sometimes they tear through my life like a hurricane. Sometimes they simply shift the ground under me, so that I stand on different earth, and something or someone has been swallowed up. I steady myself, in the earthquake. I lie down, and let the hurricane pass over me. I never fight. Afterwards I look around me, and I say, ‘Ah, so this at least is left for me. And that dear person has also survived.’ I quietly inscribe on the stone tablet of my heart the name which has gone forever. Th inscription is a thing of agony. Then I start on my way again. JOSEPHINE HART – DAMAGE
This is a karmic soul connection of epic proportions. He is not my twin who is ultimately more understanding but ever so unattainable. He is the fallen angel, the demon lover whose inner demons have trampled across the delicate pathways of my psyche because I have let him … I have welcomed him back every single time … because “I’m Just a Sucker for Pain.”
Marie Bargas 