The phone calls over the last six months from former boyfriends of my former girlfriend, Peggy, prompted me to put together all the old journal entries, fictional accounts, songs and poetry into a more comprehensive volume reflecting what I did and thought back then, and to get a better understanding of the woman herself.
Oddly enough, this examination has given me a new perspective on my current situation and a better understanding of some things the poet has been saying in her poems as of late.
Although the poet is far better educated than Peggy, and managed to exist in a better environment, both women suffered from the same basic issue – how to survive in a ruthless world and still retain some semblance of personal value.
Despite the poet’s claims otherwise, she and Peggy were both extremely moral people, not so much in the eyes of society, but in their own set of values which neither violated even when at times it risked their survival.
Both lived by their own sense of morality, refusing to accept how other people judged them. Both suffered greatly because of it, aways questioning themselves, always conscious of the social judgments they might face when exposed.
Although the poet lived in a better environment, both women were shaped by the world around them, and had to make adjustments in order to continue their lives, many times finding their lives far different from they way their originally planned.
This idea that people are shaped by the world they live in, and have to make compromises strikes at the core of the poet’s fair unfair poem, and seen in this light, suggests that good/bad, right/wrong, fair/unfair have no meaning in a world where ultimately someone has to survive,
And yet both women still refused to compromise something only they could define, their own code of ethics by which they lived.
As I pointed out in an early journal entry, the poet has many more options than Peggy did – although they both struggled with some of the same issues.
Peggy, an alcoholic and cocaine addict, struggled to keep her weight down. Our poet’s eating disorder apparently is at the core of some of her issues with self-interest, even though she seems thin to other people. Her struggle goes on even as I write this, as serious a conflict as Peggy’s struggle with cocaine.
In some ways, it becomes clear that everybody’s personal problems are as heavy as everybody else’s, because each of these two women faced these things largely alone.
Peggy was never able to find the love she needed or when she did, someone or something took it away.
This seems to be something our poet suffers from as well, although again, as pointed out, she has many more advantages than Peggy, someone of incredible talent and resourcefulness who can rise above her problems, even if at times, she appears on the verge of taking the same way out as Peggy.
She is wasted in her current situation, which may indeed be a stepping stone. But we all get trapped in things until we find a way out, and I still have hope for the poet that she will eventually – if not easily – find the road she is seeking, when poor Peggy could not.
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