A journal is a good place for reflection, I said...
I find it difficult to believe that just a week or two ago I felt as lighthearted as the former Dauphine of France I once was.
No - by all that's sacred I do not want anyone's pity for this mood of melancholy that has settled over me! I am who I am, neither more - nor less.
Some thoughts:
Louis. I think of you, often. I miss you, frequently; I wish you well, constantly. E'er did I act before I thought; even now. It is a hard lesson to learn.
Axel. My woman's heart's joy - how happy I am to have found you here!
My children. Louis-Joseph, Sophie Beatrix... how lucky you were to have died when you did. Marie-Therese, the only one of us to survive the Terror. You married Artois' son; I hope that it was... friendly, at least. I never really knew the boy. And Louis-Charles, made to suffer for our sins and used later as a weapon against me, after Louis had been murdereddied. Forgive me that I could not save you from that horror, I beg you! Would you rather that I, like Medea, had killed you myself, to spare you that abuse? No, I could not have done that. I hoped that, like your sister, you might have survived those terrifying years and managed to live into the new century - not as King, perhaps, just as "Citizen Charles", maybe.
I do not know what I think or feel right now. My thoughts whorl and whip about so; one moment I am happy to be here even in this half-life and the next, I rather wish that I were, again, quietly partaking of that long sleep.
I think that I need to consider this thing called "a list of things to accomplish" - a "to do list". I was partially in jest when I mentioned this a week or so ago, but now I think that I must be in earnest, My former life is symbolic of profligate waste to many minds today; and while I cannot change that, I can make certain that this life - or unlife - isn't marked by the same wastefulness.
I guess - to use the vernacular - that I need to "re-invent myself".
How does one go about accomplishing such a thing, though, I wonder?
No - by all that's sacred I do not want anyone's pity for this mood of melancholy that has settled over me! I am who I am, neither more - nor less.
Some thoughts:
Louis. I think of you, often. I miss you, frequently; I wish you well, constantly. E'er did I act before I thought; even now. It is a hard lesson to learn.
Axel. My woman's heart's joy - how happy I am to have found you here!
My children. Louis-Joseph, Sophie Beatrix... how lucky you were to have died when you did. Marie-Therese, the only one of us to survive the Terror. You married Artois' son; I hope that it was... friendly, at least. I never really knew the boy. And Louis-Charles, made to suffer for our sins and used later as a weapon against me, after Louis had been murdereddied. Forgive me that I could not save you from that horror, I beg you! Would you rather that I, like Medea, had killed you myself, to spare you that abuse? No, I could not have done that. I hoped that, like your sister, you might have survived those terrifying years and managed to live into the new century - not as King, perhaps, just as "Citizen Charles", maybe.
I do not know what I think or feel right now. My thoughts whorl and whip about so; one moment I am happy to be here even in this half-life and the next, I rather wish that I were, again, quietly partaking of that long sleep.
I think that I need to consider this thing called "a list of things to accomplish" - a "to do list". I was partially in jest when I mentioned this a week or so ago, but now I think that I must be in earnest, My former life is symbolic of profligate waste to many minds today; and while I cannot change that, I can make certain that this life - or unlife - isn't marked by the same wastefulness.
I guess - to use the vernacular - that I need to "re-invent myself".
How does one go about accomplishing such a thing, though, I wonder?