Letter to Camille

                                                    London, 1850

Dear Camille:

I cannot write, neither can I sleep. I am haunted. I have been for some time now. Eight months, one week and three days. He appears to me as a vague illusion threatening to overcome me anytime soon. I am in imminent danger. When his memory comes drifting to my mind there are only two words to describe what I am well aware of feeling. Danger and Confusion. He is my secret, my sin, and I am very certain he is also to become my tragedy, the worst of any I can now come to think about.

I am not to tell you which our story is, not even how it begun. I am well aware it is forbidden, and therefore, it may be this that troubles me in such a way I have begun feeling oppressed and no longer able to breathe. He is my very personal stigma. I do not know if I shall live past this. If my body succeeds to it, it will no longer be me who possesses it. It is to be someone who had not begun existing till now and very deep within my most secret desires, which not even I dare dream of.

Oh! If you only knew how greatly I suffer! It is exciting and somehow impossible to resist. I may have no rest, not during day, not during night. How I wish I could put in words how troubled I am! If I could only make you understand perhaps you could suggest a way to ease this sorrow, but I cannot. I dare not. And yet my mind wishes not. There is some kind of unusual and sick pleasure in this suffering… It is delicious and addictive. My once innocent mind runs away from its mere thought but then again it finds its way back. I feel dirty and full of sin. I shiver to the remembrance of the memory, of the touch of his lips with my skin, of the smell of his body, and the sensation of his hair in the grasp of my fingers. I make myself sick and hatred emanates through every pore of me. I do not know how to control it. I feel lost and yet, full of bliss. Is it not insane to have such contrary feelings by the thought of the exact same thing? Please Camille, I beg you. Tell me it is normal, for if you do not, I much fear I will become mad. 

As I keep writing, the sensation I have already become very familiar with during these past months starts embracing me once more. I feel isolated. It is as if I was having dinner with the most eminent people of England in the most interesting situation and still hear nothing at all. Their mouths are moving compass like. They laugh and take a sip of tea. I can tell they are uttering my name by the way their mouths move, but I still cannot manage to care. I am very far away. They all seem to move so slowly! I am amazed they are not already asleep. Then the burning begins. I know it is not my heart for I feel its beats as normal as ever. Or perhaps in a way it is. It comes from my very inner core. I cannot think of nothing but it. It is growing and outstretching every muscle of my chest. My lungs are lacking from space to contain the vital substance and finally my mouth opens to grasp some air, but it is useless. There is pain immediately after, followed by sweet desperation. Afterwards, a hot feeling comes rushing from deep within my chest and very slowly spreads through every single part of my body. I feel stillness, and then, nothing.

I can then stop passing back and forth through my chamber. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, fix myself and go out to continue my ordinary tasks. I always smile at the right time, and I act upon the exact definition of polite so that no one ever asks a question. I do not think anyone suspects a thing, not even he who I once thought held my heart.

Entire days may come and go without me experimenting what I so carefully described above, but not one day that he doesn’t come to my mind. Any way at all is allowed. At times I wish I could forget everything and start anew, recover my innocence and be who I so comfortably was before. You my friend, above all, know I already had enough with my usual madness, but this, this has come to overcome me. And yet, I sometimes wish it never goes away. I wish it will repeat itself and let me loose all sense of morality and laws ruled by society. I am struggling against two parts of me. One I did not even know existed. I am scared. Scared of this lasting forever and scared of it stopping. I need to know what it is. I have made my choice; I will leave tonight. I have to see him again; there is no other way. Please understand I do not own myself right now. I am being driven by an unknown force. With all my heart, I hope you do not judge me so harshly.

Love, Annette.