Dear Ravi:

I read both your posts. Your poem is amazing. The emotions are raw and well articulated; your intelligence evident, strong. Your use of words… it is an authentic poem, nothing compromised for the sake of form, of rhyming and such.

I thought about you and your life as I learned about you and your life in our correspondence on this thread. And it is clearer to me this morning that there are different issues that in your passion and grief are mixed where in reality they are quite separate. I am also aware that your despair at this time, ever since you sent Jerry the Festival message and she didn’t reply.

Please try to be calm as you read my post here so that your brain can process my input. And do tell me if you believe I got it wrong here and there and let me know. It is about you finding the truth, not about agreeing with me. I am not here to be agreed with but to try and help you see the truth yourself. These are the separate issues as I see them:

1) Your expression of your intense anger (rage)- we both agree about this topic. As you wrote in your poem:
“For the harsh words that my cursed lips uttered, I bear guilt
…For my all uncivilized behaviour, I am responsible to the hilt.”

Unlike your grandmother’s and mother’s messages to you, mine is not that you are always right and the other person is wrong. On this topic you were wrong: you indeed were abusive to Jerry. We discussed this topic at length. My suggested solution is that you assert yourself with everyone in your life and take charge of your life. My suggestion is not that you become passive and accommodating, that would be the extreme change which will only fuel the rage, but that you become consistently assertive on a daily basis.

2) Your relationship with Jerry of about 3 years, even though it has been all online and one time on the phone, was a real relationship, just like our correspondence here is real, honest, thorough… even though we never saw or heard each other. Your relationship with Jerry was real, the emotions were real, the mutual loving feelings were real and your current loving emotions for her are real and I respect them as such.

3) The chances of a relationship with Jerry in-person was always and – independently of topic # 1- dismal, extremely small. Almost non-existent. This topic here, number three, must be hard to take and therefore, I am thinking, you didn’t want to think about and still don’t. I will repeat, saying it in a different way:

Even if you were the calmest, most perfectly kind, never abusive, always gracious man in the whole wide world, the chances for a relationship with Jerry in-person would be as small as they are now.

This is because having a relationship with you beyond the strict brother-sister (in her mind) online communication and one phone call, is not up to Jerry. It is up to her parents.

And because you never met her parents, online or elsewhere and because they know nothing of you, your abusive behavior when angry is irrelevant to the dismal, almost non existing chances of a relationship with her beyond what it was.

4) Although I agree with you, according to your quotes and descriptions, that she has been very kind and loving toward you, it is also true as I see it, that her honesty about her feelings for you was limited. She went as far as lying, saying you shared no personal information. She turned a blind eye to what she already knew, that you had feelings for her beyond brother-sister. And she turned a blind eye to her own feelings that went beyond brother-sister.

5) India is still a country of Arranged Marriages, unfortunately. This institution of Arranged Marriages and otherwise an extremely strong control that grandparents and parents have over their adult children is bigger, way, way bigger than anything else. In this context, topic #1, is again… irrelevant.

6) As far as your suffering. You naturally feel pain for having been abusive to Jerry. This is the consequence of your behavior. Suffering more than necessary is not wise, it serves no purpose. It doesn’t earn you points, doesn’t take away your anger… it is unnecessary.

What do you think so far, what do you agree with and what do you disagree with? Please do increase the area of what you are looking at, instead of a “tunnel vision” focused only on your abusive behavior when enraged, AS IF that is the cause of everything and the solution is in suffering for it… look at the wider picture, the whole picture.

anita