menu Language Is A Virus

(From) Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing by May Sarton

But here at the nub of acute pain and sorrow, Hilary lifted her head. Yes, it had been terrible, but we learn most about ourselves from the unacceptable, from the violent, from the mad one who weeps and roars in the subterranean caves; let this one out into the air and he brings the light with him; the light that has to be earned, the light of compassion for oneself, the strange mercy that follows upon any commitment of such depth when it is played out and so has to be faced.
At the end we were each broken in half. The boy in me was dead. I had to go on as a woman. And Dorothea? She of the disciplined mind had come to terms with the anarchic Aphrodite buried so deep within herself, who could not be brought to life except in agony. We were nearly dead; we each knew that this was a final relationship. There could be no other. But we had turned the Medusa face around and seen our selves. The long solitude ahead would be the richer for it.