Not even in dream

Yes, I’ve been bouncing off walls since coming back from treatment. I know this. Part of it is being thrust into ‘survivorship’ mode, part of it is a broken heart. And to top it off I had another operation this week. Only a minor one …to have the portacath taken out and a mole taken off my left breast. Still my body has been through so much crap this year it is finding it hard to take much more and what was supposed to be day surgery ended up me staying overnight. And I have a few extra scars on my chest and breasts now to add to the collection. Que sera etc.

There’s really only so much a person can take at any one time and I’m reaching the limit. The hardest to deal with now is the broken heart, but I’m at the stage where I’ve now had to accept it, the situation is not going to change, and I have to grieve the letting go, grieve the ‘lessening of importance’ in a loved one’s life. My battle with this is pissing some people off, but I can’t take that on board … I am barely coping with the way I’M dealing or not dealing with it. To those people I apologise but I have to take care of myself first and foremost. Childhood attachment issues playing a huge part in this. Needing to get my anti-depressant medication sorted out as it patently is not working anymore.

Anyway. I found a poignant sonnet in a little old book of Francis Thompson’s poetry. I have never heard of him before I bought this book. I’m getting quite a collection of turn of the century lovelies (books, mostly poetry). While I can’t see, from what I’ve read, that this poet is incredibly talented or one of the best … this sonnet was perfect, for me, at this precise moment in time. And I just plain love a good sonnet anyway 🙂

Not Even in Dream

This love is crueller than the other love:
We had the Dreams for Tryst, we other pair;
But here there is no we;–not anywhere
Returning breaths of sighs about me move.
No wings, even of the stuff which fancy wove,
Perturb Sleep’s air with a responsive flight
When mine sweep into dreams. My soul in fright
Circles as round its widowed nest a dove.

One shadow but usurps another’s place:
And, though this shadow more enthralling is,
Alas, it hath no lips at all to miss!
I have not even that former poignant bliss,
That haunting sweetness, that forlorn sad trace,
The phantom memory of a vanished kiss.

Talk to me!