My Year With Proust - Day 130

   "But, as time went on, every refusal to see her grieved me less.  And as she became less dear to me, my painful memories were no longer strong enough to destroy by their incessant return the growing pleasure which i found in thinking of Florence or of Venice.  I regretted, at such moments, that I had abandoned the idea of diplomacy and had condemned myself to a sedentary existence, in order not to be separated from a girl whom I should never see again and had already almost forgotten.  We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her."

Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 682

Proust is finally getting over Gilberte, although I fear that there will be more heartbreak in the future.  One wonders if there is a proclivity, if not necessarily genetic, to being dumped and ending up morose and miserable.  What jumps out at me about this passage is, without going down that road again, is how in many ways it paralleled my own life, although with a few odd twists and turns.  Proust wrote, "We construct our lives for one person, and when at length it is ready to receive her that person does not come; presently she is dead to us, and we live on, prisoners within the walls which were intended only for her."  I think within a short amount of time I had placed myself in that position not once, but twice.  Somehow I survived, although maybe having one follow so quick on the heels of the other actually helped cancel out the potential harm from either one.  Maybe the realization that I could fall in love again, even at my advanced age, made me understand how restrictive those walls are, and, more importantly, how they are self-constructed.  It sounds cheesy, but I do think it is a world of infinite possibilities.  I was thinking earlier today that the people who can't live without one particular woman have fallen into the trap because they stopped living altogether.  As I'm sure I've discussed before, my grandfather Jum, the Hoosier philosopher, always said that women were like streetcars; if you miss one, go to any street corner and there will be another one along in ten minutes.  I don't know if I believe that, necessarily, but I do completely believe that people stop living their lives.  At a very low point I took off and traveled a bit of the world, and filled up an empty, tattered heart with no experiences, and in the process rediscovered my passion for live.  And, without necessarily planning to do so, recreated myself as a person who could love and be loved.  You can always construct new houses, and you should probably design the walls around you anyway.