Ms. Bliss.

Dear Eula,

I understand.

Sincerely yours,
Dottie.

Except not really;

"But I am comforted, oddly, by the possibility that you cannot compare my pain to yours. And, for that reason, cannot prove it insignificant."-- p. 39.

Eula, can I at least say that "I feel you?"

Whilst reading this passage, I possibly annotated its fourteen pages more than I have entire books: underlining, starring, bracketing, little quips and sighs. I was swept into this passage as if taken in by a tornado. I could feel myself swirling around in the author's world, pain and purpose being the eye of its storm.

And so there I sat in the library, pouring over this creative nonfiction Gospel lesson. And then, who should walk in but my past, clothed in the same pain and hurt that Eula had just spoken about, mostly in this passage:

"Imagination is treacherous. It erases distant continents, it builds a Hell so real that the ceiling is vulnerable to collapse."-- p. 37.

I was frozen solid. I opened my mouth to speak and felt my words had shrunk in size and in meaning. I laid them on the table in front of me as if in an attempt to sort them out before my past.

My past does nothing but smile at me. Though it is often painful and more often forgotten, it has its days where it sits in my line of vision, allowing nothing to pass but my grievous thoughts.

"I cannot ask [my body] to remember not feeling pain it foes feel. I have found that I can ask my body to imagine the pain it feels as something else. For example, with some effort I can imagine the sensation of pain as heat." -- p. 37.

Or in my case, imagining my past as something I cannot be made accountable for.

So I sat at that library table with my past so effervescently leaning against a nearby bookshelf. He smiled. Then laughed. Then whispered. Then left.

And I, with this book in my hands, sobbed into it with my own suffering.

"I would happily cut off a finger at this point if I could trade the pain of that cut for the endless pain I have now." --p. 37. (by now a good page.)

I feel the same way as Eula when she states, "I struggle to consider my pain in proportion to the pain of a napalmed Vietnamese girl whose skin is slowly melting off as she walks naked in the sun. The exercise is painful." --p. 33. I hate that my day can be ruled by what I'm sure seems trivial on the outside to an innocent bystander.

"Who is she? Why is she just sitting in the library window, sobbing over her book, at 10 a.m.?"

But it's like I said; though we as human beings are all connected by having the feelings of pain at one time or another, we cannot possibly begin to compare our pains to others'. It can only cause more pain in many situations.

We must at simply try to build an understanding through patience, trust, and love. And for the hurting: several boxes of tissues, a pen, and paper.

Dear Eula,

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,
Dottie