Bluebells

Today Coppelia was in a wood of bluebells. A close friend, with whom she also works, visited her for the afternoon. A good friend, quietly concerned for her, always there for her. So patient, her friends! They lunched together at the pub where Coppelia works, then drove to the wood and wandered around the many paths and glades while they talked. The bluebells were almost fluorescent where the sunlit played over them. She remembered how, two years ago, she and the man she loved had walked in a bluebell wood. He had pressed her against the trunk of an oak tree and fervently kissed her, saying that he would never, ever leave her...bluebells. Each year they come again.

As one who loves...

She would live as one who loves.
So many need you to love them, Coppelia.
Her story has now reached the present.
From now each time Coppelia writes she will be
telling her story as it is currently unfolding.
She is living as one who loves.
Loving him.

Just loving him.

All passes.

Turn off the stars...

turn off the stars

darken every one

black out the moon

shut down the sun

you love me no longer

and I have no home

What's to be said? She worked. Hard. She wrote. She met friends, read books, travelled, meditated again and again on ' the still hour of the sea's withdrawal'... time, give it time. You love him, you see him, life goes on. On May 5th they wandered again in the silver birch wood, in dappled warm spring sun. In a shady bower under those softly swaying, graceful birch trees, they made love. Afterwards she held him closely, pressing him to her and drinking in the smell of him, the feel of him, as she watched the sparkling green of the high branches as they brushed across the luminous blue sky. A wonderful day together, even after everything. With his arms around her tightly her she knew there was nowhere she would rather be.This is why you are still here, she told herself. " Do you think one day you may love me again?" she asked.

"Maybe I can. I do hope so," he told her. He added that it would bring him great sorrow never to see her again, but he would understand if she couldn't go on. Soon after receiving her poem One Dark Hour, he had said how deeply moved he was by her words. How he had read it several times. Nearby was a rhododendron bush of soft purple flowers, and Coppelia picked one to keep.

This small, beautiful flower, her favourite colour, had watched over them making love, had been there when he held her under the silver birches. She would see hope in this one small thing. A sign her sorrow may pass, for ince hearing those words, 'I don't love you any more,' she felt she was drowning in sorrow, in regret. Words spoken to her so gently, and with eyes that - and she knew this was not wishful thinking - certainly were not eyes without the look of love. Or was it merely kindness?

Yet, she must live as one who loves, not one seeking to be loved. Her wonderful friends, she must love them, look after them. Stop thinking of your own suffering, Coppelia! Yet fighting her sadness was exhausting. For all was now so different. A space between them where once they had been so close. And all her own stupid fault! She had brought about the very thing she had feared. Her lack of trust had caused the fading ( she dare not really believe it had totally gone...) of his love for her. In fearing loss of that love, she had chased it further away. How she hated what she had done!

Sometimes we can only take so much. After heartbreak has pounded us we can only respond to the next hurt with so much outward show of pain. No-one could have guessed how Coppelia was feeling: it was poured down deep, deep inside, in every cell, in every breath. It gripped her heart like an iron fist, squeezing against all her efforts to resist its power. In time, she told herself. In time you will feel better. In time he will draw close to you again.
In time you will feel fully alive once more. 'All passes...'

turn off the stars

darken every one

black out the moon

shut down the sun

you love me no longer

and I have no home

One dark hour

You may remember how, right at the start of this story, Coppelia wrestled with the memory of betrayal in a past relationship. She had searched herself to trust again, and she had indeed trusted this man fully; which was why, when he abandoned her in an instant two summers ago, Coppelia broke down so completely.
As time passed since then, Coppelia realised just how far her trust was destroyed. Ever since that summer, something in her would question what he claimed to be the truth about his life when they were apart. However much he claimed to love her and want her, something in her dare not quite believe it to be so. He had, after all, put the happiness of another woman before her own. If he had treated her that way once...?
So from time to time her insecurity would cause her to doubt him and this mistrust on her part had tested their relationship. When this happened, she tried to explain to him how and why she felt insecure, and, though he struggled to fully understand, he would accept Coppelia found the situation hard, and always sought to reassure her.
So it was that, during his trip to Ostend, her insecurity again got the better of her and, whilst they spoke on the phone late one evening she panicked over some misunderstanding, and accused him of lying to her. She knew she had gone too far this time. For him, this was the last straw.
When they met on his return, he told her that on hearing her words something in him had died. He was still extremely fond of her and really wanted to carry on seeing her if she could bear that, but a numb emptiness inside had taken the place of the passionate love that was there before. He had to tell her the truth.
"I felt a snap inside me, like something had broken," he told her. "Now it feels like having an open wound. A huge emptiness where love was. I am so sorry, but I don't love you any more." The words cloaked Coppelia in the heaviest sadness she had ever known. A sadness that came down like a silent, choking fog, setting like concrete in her veins. She spoke:
"Of course I will still see you, I want to make you happy. I am not in this for what I can get, but for what I have to give- my love for you. Yet I don't know how I shall live, knowing you don't love me. I can't believe it's possible."
"All passes" he quietly said, his eyes lowered, "all passes"..
That night, Coppelia wrote this poem and sent it to him the next day.

One Dark Hour

Who could forsee how one dark hour

slips in to steal away sweet years?

Turn back the clock! Undo the words,

seal up the wound, uncry the tears

Old scars unhealed, that sowed mistrust

have killed this love of mine

O wretched words, be silenced, fly!

Turn back the hands of time!

Turn back, turn back, bring forth again

that second when betrayal's knife

stood poised - but this time, not force down

its blade into our love, my life.

You say 'all passes' yet I know

what will not pass:the way I miss you

Miss your touch, your words of love:

O pain of knowing I can't kiss you!

Turn back the clock! Then wretched lies

from years long past that came to haunt me

I may this time cast aside,

refuse their power, not hear them taunt me

Yet clock hands only one way turn,

and we must leave past hurts to be

All I can do is love you still,

and hope time brings you back to me.