Extract from a diary dated Friday, 10 July 1992
Please God let me wake from this dream! Please God may she not be dead! Those words – the ones I so recently wrote – for them may I be forgiven! Those terrible words! – when I disavowed my love for my own flesh and blood, for my own children, for my daughter. But how could I be forgiven? The fates decree otherwise and ever have so decreed. The words may be blotted out but they will remain. The paper may be burned in the furnace but the words will persist for evermore. Oh blackness! Oh night of the soul! Throw open the wide door of hell, Infernal Spirits, for it is I who approach – all hope of virtue, all hope of life abandoned! I have reached the Inferno and there now read that grim pronouncement of despair above it’s portal.
I am sunk deep in misery and anguish of mind and spirit. At my desk I sit here weeping bitter tears. I shout Forgive me! Forgive me! And then I shout again Forgive me! Everyone forgive me! Had I still belief in God I would seek to pray. But I cannot. And even now – even in the abyss of my despair – I have not told the truth! Let it be known that tomorrow I shall once more be happy – some of tomorrow's hours will bring me happiness again.
(Later.) I am so low I wish I were dead. My selfishness my self-is so great that I can have no pity for the others – the others who grieve so greatly. I have just re-read one of Hardy's poems. I used to know it by heart. No longer though and now my left forefinger traces the lines as slowly I copy it out:
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon… O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing
Not even I – would undo me so.
I never really managed to speak to you my daughter. I never told you my darling daughter because I did not know – and you can never know why and can never understand.
I have reached a decision. This journal shall be discontinued. Always when I look back on what I have written I see nothing of any worth – only self-indulgence – theatricality – over-emotionalism. Just one plea I make. It was never forced or insincere or hypocritical. No, never!
But no more.