The Fifteenth Reply - Nine Years Prior

To Sonia, my friend an insurmountable distance away, 

Forgive me for such a delay between my reception of your previous letter and the composition of this one which now lay before you - I find that there are portions of my life which feel, in the kindest of terms, as impossible to travel as it would be for me to walk to Tuscovy. In such states of mind, I am mildly ashamed to admit my struggles in maintenance of the basic tasks of life, such as eating, sleeping, and caring for a home. I trust you’ll be gracious in updating your assessment of me; you have been needfully kind with each moment of personal weakness I disclose to you. 

Stepping out from the burdensome hole which I have found myself, I have once again taken stock of my life and found things left wanting within it. I live alone, save for the pigeons which grace my street on occasion, whom I feel a strange kinship with, and at times feel that there is an emptiness within my loneliness. The monks of yore and the great spiritual thinkers speak often about the comforts of solitude, the space to reflect and shape oneself; yet I must profess, perhaps the spiritual life is not one for me, as I can hardly seem to bear it. 

Sometimes I regret the decision not to marry. I implore you to share this fact of me with no one - though I suppose there are none around you whom my personage would be known by - for I feel I have a reputation to upkeep. Admittance of the difficulty of my unwed lifestyle might place within people the perception that I am wrong to do the things which I feel I must do - that women must remain within their designated position and not encroach upon the territory of men. I should not like them to feel confirmed in this predilection. 

I was not always alone. There was a person for whom I cared so deeply it felt as though an anchor had been enchained upon me - so desperate was my need for them. I’ll not provide further details of this person, either for recalling the pain their departure has caused me or the desire to respect their privacy and not boast of our prior association. But, even in the years since we were torn asunder, I am ashamed of how things ended. Hindsight has bestowed upon me a clarity of mind I was not capable of within that context, and if time could be reversed and I preserve the knowledge I now possess, I ought to have been quite content with the relationship we had with one another. It could have been a beautiful life indeed. 

I’ll ask you to forgive me again. You wrote of a great many interesting and varied things in your previous correspondence, and I do intend to reply to each and every one, though I feel I should like to sit with those concepts and prepare a more sophisticated response when my mind is clearer. For now, I felt it necessary to compose this letter in advance to apologize for my temporary disappearance and inform you to look forward to a following message from me within the fortnight. 

With great humility of self, 

Cordelia Jones