Underworld

[Guest guest]

Hi there,

I just received a letter from an old friend that I knew

A long time ago. She just retired from her job as a

consultant for a large California Firm, and a mutural friend

had given her my address; what a surprise.!

Strange how the lost becomes found again, She was a woman

that grew up in a modest Glendale household, which beneath a

meticulous appearances of happiness and beauty held a dark

secret; her father had been sexually involved with her younger

sister from the time the girl was three. She had protested but,

a child herself at the time, was helpless to change the situation.

And the Mother---- went into a total state of denial.

She had complex emotions about her memories--grief, rage, and

even the sick feeling of not being chosen.

He first suicide attempt came when she was a young teenager.

Then for years, she spent each day trying not to kill herself. As she

emerged from this terrible time she began to run with motorcycle

gangs, She rode a big fast bike and pumped iron. She learned the

martial arts. She seemed to make a performance piece out of the

painful ingredients given her by the world she grew up in. She was

drenching herself in the same desperation, but visibly, publicly. she

walked without pretense, in a kind of haze, and close to death. Those

who loved her could do nothing but worry and hold her in their keen

awareness and wait the time through, taking on the role of Demeter.

Eventually, dawn came with its grey light, & her fever seemed to break.

She became able to weep, and sweep the cob-webs away.She went off

to graduate school, and we wrote to each other for awhile then I moved

away. and we lost track.

If you were to meet her today she might give out this silent message,

" Though I walk among you like this, I have lived a long time in the night,

and it has marked me, and as you see me now, so I am. " While she

found joy, she never forgot the night and, like Persephone, seemed

always to committ part of herself to the underworld.

We are two survivors, but more than that, we came through the Fire.

Regards

S.C.

But we two are survivors