The Lady's Letter:

Cecilia sat sullenly on the edge of her bed holding her sore wrist and studying the incriminating finger-shaped bruises already beginning to form. She closed her eyes to force back the tears that resided just behind her lids. When had her life become so forlorn? And how had she become so desirous to fit in that she would throw away any chance of happiness she had for a little well-placed attention?
        Oh, how she longed for someone to talk to--for someone to help her understand herself amongst this world of constant confusion. If only there was someone she hadn't pushed away.
        Her thoughts took an unusual turn to the Poet's Juliet Capulet, to whom she had always felt a sort of connection, herself living in a world where the love she so desperately sought was looked down upon and openly mocked.  And so, taken by the utterly hopeless idea that it was, she sat to write to the only person she could think of.



Juliet,
Dear Juliet,
I have always longed to have known you: to have known a soul loving enough to end centuries of hatred. I have longed for that gentleness, that innocence, when in this dark and perverse world I have felt such qualities to be shamed and looked upon as a weakness. It is certainly a marvelous thing that in your own world of unappreciation and restriction (especially to the members of our own gender)  your soul was not crushed as countless others were. Tell me; how did you find strength to defy society, indeed to go against the feud? Is it not true that, even though in doing so it, in the end, killed you? But then tell me this: was it not all worth it?
      Whatever the answer may be for you, I can tell you for me it was. I have not made half the sacrifice you made, but whatever I have done has transformed me. It changed me from who I pretended to be to who I was meant to be all along; but more than that it has given me knowledge of myself and an added confidence in who I will yet become.
      Now, dearest Juliet, though I have praised you so highly for the strength of your soul, there is one area on which I disagree.
      At the conclusion of your story, the solution which you found was in death never to be parted from your love. But allow me to say this: could you not, even in your despair, have fathomed a life beyond your grief? Does not one live to love again? And if, through your trial, you were meant to grow, could you not have grown a new heart fresh from agony for your departed love? Can one, in all honesty, learn to love again?

      It is from my own experience that I ask this. I have thought once that I was in love; that I must have been in love, but now that it's gone I've begun to think differently. There was, in the midst of everything, a constant confusion, which never allowed me to ever feel fully at peace. 

      My object in writing this now is to ask how you know when you've found the right one. How does one define love? The heart is of a strange makeup--prone to excited impulses of feeling, each varying in intensity from the last, which leave the mind to ponder which one ignited your love. Was it the one who turned your life into something new, or was it the one you'd overlooked your entire life because he'd always been there--the one whose memory burns your cheek until you can't help but remember the way his eyes glistened in the moonlight and his fingers felt in your hair every time you see him?
      Is love defined in the moment you first see them, or the last? Or, is it simply that moment in the middle that plays over and over again in your mind? Is love defined by the length of your bond or in the infinity that lies between each look you share?
      And perhaps I do not seek an answer to these questions at all; perhaps I do not wish to know how to define love or to recognize its first seconds of existence. But perhaps it is enough  to know that it exists, and that if we do not define love then maybe it defines us.


Cecilia pushed the paper aside, knowing nothing could ever come of it, but feeling better for having written it all the same. She thought of Thomas and how, before she'd complicated everything, he'd always been there for her--how she could have told him about anything. And in that moment she realized having him there for her was worth more than the horrid Mr. Pritchard's small attention had ever been.
      She suddenly knew she must terminate her relationship with Mr. Pritchard. Cecilia would be alone once more, wanting nothing but to regain Thomas's favor (and even more, but the hope seemed too extravagant), but too frightened of another rejection to even consider broaching the topic with him.
      If only she'd seen things as they were before she'd allowed Mr. Pritchard to ruin her life. Perhaps then she might have realized how desperately in love she was with the long gone Thomas Roudington.