“The look in a lover’s eyes
Mask dropped – no disguise
But is the soul truly awake?
Seeing the other as they really are – with the inevitable scar?

It had been one year since the last note.

Ages.

For Edwin it had been a time of Bliss – capital B – with the girl of the gentle blue eyes and the fondness for Earl Grey tea.

But it all came crashing down. She had now left him, informing him that he had been taking her for granted and she had met this new guy…Blah…Blah…Blah.

She was right. He had fallen into a comfort zone of normality – expecting her to be around.

As he read the note his emotions fell into a dead zone that left him sitting at the bottom of the stairs with tears leaking over his cheeks and falling to dampen his shirt. His mind tried to trace out the exact shape of his sadness and of course the left-brain voice admonished him for being ‘soppy’ as it embarked on the well-worn tirade of ‘Pull yourself together man’.

As if that would do any good.

It was only in a moment of calm reflection that he was able to make sense of the words in the second half of the note.

He realized that the relationship decisions he had made in his life had been just plain wrong for him. They were, in fact, just plain wrong for others too, despite the two-faced, self-mendacious blindingly idiotic stories told by his left-brain self to convince him of their validity.

As he inwardly surveyed the barren aftermath of the violence he had inflicted upon his soul, he realized now just how prolonged the activity of self-destruction had been.

The pit of despair was deep, and it had no ready handholds for climbing out, leaving him to wait for a chance ray of inner sunshine to illuminate his squalid conditions. Getting out was a hard won process, only done by digging steps with the bare figurative hands of his soul and crawling – inch by individual feeling inch – out of his sloth.

The War was still on – and it was still Inner.

He saw how it represented a battle between life and death, no less real for being frequently dismissed because it was Subjective – capital S. The Ultimate Insult.

He could now see that he must keep the ‘Inner Eyes’ of his soul wide open if he was going to survive and stop inflicting more self-harm.

But for now he was just going to have to Cope – capital C.

© Charles Tolman 2014.