Loved By Another Chapter One

FEBUARY EIGHT

I live in a world where enemies are made in an instant, but kept a lifetime. A world where isolation is a welcomed and society is a place of segregated punishment, where just simple birthright of colour condemns you to a life of inept, debilitating suffering.

I hold the title of Lady, my husband a Lord purely on birthright rather than any other form of accomplishment. As an aristocrat woman, I was a precious commodity sold for breeding purposes. Once sold I have been condemned to a frontier lifestyle, a punishment that seems without end, a life without my sisters, nor the parents who condemned me to this life. I guess I should have expected this, as my older sisters were political and social marriage gains, rather than for love. But my sister’s husbands were decent men, where they found compassion, delicacy and love in the end, I have found hate. My husband, though, is the kind for whom ownership constitutes life and insubordination equals death.
We sailed to this miserable new world, leaving my home, my country, my life, my family and all that I have ever known for a my husband’s dream of perfection, a place where he can rule undisputed.

There is something about Oliver that is unannounced, some form of compromised dignity that is so full of shame that have made this lord escape his domain of privilege and power. Whispers of unhealthy appetites gained while in the army in India, ripple through aristocratic society where army service for at least one male per family is almost mandatory. What began as whispers of contempt, uttered behind masks of societal privilege, of children and of acts with them that are unmentionable, gradually became less that whispers when regarding my husband. Yet still, these barely concealed rumors became large enough, threatening enough, to make him flee to a half born country such as this.

If he finds this journal, he will consider this the highest form of insubordination. He will not kill me, but rather he will torture me until death seems comparably favorable. But this is all I have, words no longer lonely but volatile within the tyranny of grammatical conduct. This is how I survive, how I live. This, in a foreign life, is the only thing of myself that I have left to centre me.

We are here, in a city of noise and dirt and immigrants. Oliver has left to pursue earthly pleasures that I notice his eyes as it casually passes over, and then rejects me. In this alien environment, I am left almost solely alone. Terribly alone. Comfortably alone. In eight weeks we will reach the estate that Oliver has purchased, on one of his earlier expeditions. In the last eighteen days, we will reach a market where a race of people is balanced precociously on the systematic destruction of another.

FEBUARY TEN

There is only a little over a month before we leave this place full of restless, contemptuous energy. A journey to an estate that will be worked and kept by owned bodies and insulted souls. They do exist here, to my husband’s bountiful pleasure, but when conversation inevitably turns to the issues of an uncultured south, of these people who were imported, and who are abused and breed for enslavement. I have no further definitive statement than this: the ownership of another is appalling. How can any such objective humanity support this fallacy, this destroying destruction of our collective soul? I have asked so much of my life, too much. I hide behind my wealth, my privilege. How do I help the plight of slaves, when I have no courage, no ability, to stand for myself, let alone for something far greater than anything that I have ever encountered. I desire an alternative existence behind the façade that this imprecision of my life, yet I do not seek yet this change, I do not challenge myself by defying my husband, out of debilitating fear.

FEBUARY TWELVE

There is shopping. The theater so poor, it cannot really be considered as such. From this small period of time that I am left unattended, I can escape this hotel, this room with all the little and pretty, things that are dressed in shades of twilight and sunset. Shades that make your soul want to sleep, cast itself adrift from its own habitat. Oliver is often out on business in this port city, heavy with traffic and people, the Irish and the French, the languages and the flavor from street culture. I have not yet looked around, not yet seen how so many can live in such a small space, and still yet survive.

The dinning room here is classically European, but the culture here for dinning conversation is hazardous, a minefield of politics and often barely understated incitements of undercover beliefs. The journey here is only the rest before the storm, there is so much residual static confusing any emotions here, twisting the heat of this city into brutal perspective. This estate that Oliver purchased is far enough from this port city, into heat and heavy, burdened weather that leaves the heat here as faded warmth, as if were the dying of the day.

The ladies here are disproportionate in comparison to the ladies back home. Here they seem to be soft, as if rare fruit yet have razors in there mouths. There is a solitude here, though, a quietness that is temperamental, as if expecting disruption but basking in quiet voicelessness. It is in this sense of solitude that I can contemplate the barrenness that my existence has become.

FEBUARY FIFTEENTH

I have asked so much out of life, too much. I hide behind my wealth, my privilege. How do I help the slaves, when I have no courage, no ability to stand for myself, let alone achieve something far greater than anything I have ever encountered. I desire an alternative existence behind the façades that imprison my life, yet I do not seek it, I do not challenge myself by defying my husband.

I cannot abide my life as a prisoner, of my marriage, of this country, of this human tragedy. My own Ignorance surpasses my imagination. There is so much I did not know, did not feel. I have been oblivious to humanity, to the cruelty it inflicts. I move within the same circles both at home, and here, those that are the law makers, the leaders of men, the leaders of countries. No matter how they endeavor, such a political farces such as this cannot now be undone; it is hazardously clung to as if it were achievable to sustain.

I am shamed, participating within the framework of the oppressor, so much so that I am wounded and may never recover. I am blinded, continually, by my ignorance in regards to matters of culture and propriety, so much so that I cannot seem to gain any sense of knowledge. It has given an insight even to my experience that up to this point has been denied.

FEBUARY SEVENTEENTH

The fugitive slave law, which was enacted 7 years before I arrived in this godless country endeavor to destroy not only the lives of those who have no control, but those who force control, who force an ideology and God’s wrath to end the indecency of this peculiar institution. Many people are publicly forcing the issue to a violent forefront, and many have been for years. Many have the courage that I seem not only not to have but am then unable to give. Women who are speaking out against this appalling institution are denounced as unladylike and indecent. This is simply for having moral dignity, something which fails against my husband’s stronger will, and for fear of his detestable, ungentlemanly friends.

They are forced to be Christian, forbidden to speak or sing with their own voices in their own words. Slaves, or in fact anyone, do not need to be Christian to be free, nor should they be expected to be Christian. God loves them no matter the way of their worship, as the only requirement imposed by God, not by their enforced subjugation and fear by numbers style of belief.