A Man and his Anima: A Love Letter

This may be read as romance between a man and his lover, but may also be read as a psychoanalytic commune between a man and an archetype (following Jung) pertaining to his psyche.

My dearest Anima,

For many years, my imagination has been painting me a portrait of you.

I sought your company whenever it was available to me in order to experience who I was when I was with you, and when you became absent from me, I allowed a dreaming sense of myself to contribute my recollection of these experiences towards a form of you that persisted in my imagination until I began to call it you, as if to bind you forever to my consciousness and so cement together that which was apart.

And so I lost you.

Time and again I have lost you.

I cannot even tell you now how long it has been since I last saw you.

It may have been a week, maybe longer. I really can't tell. As time makes recalling your face more difficult, the night on which we saw each other last seems so long ago, and yet, in a moment such as this, it seems more recent, even as though it were still unfolding for me, like a great gong was struck that night which is still sounding.

I deeply regret the part I played in ending our night early. In so saying, I do not regret my part in the same manner in which a part only contributes a part to a whole, and thus may be permitted to look upon the other parts to share responsibility for the whole. Rather, the part I played that night was not unlike a part played upon a stage by an actor for an audience. The audience on the night was you, but how I wish it had not been, because I played the part of a jealous fool. I wish greatly that my lines had been anything other than that which they were, to which end I have put aside the part of your jealous fool, and have reprised the part of he whom in silence waits for nothing lesser or greater than an end to suffering your absence.

Yet still together we suffer, he and I.

We hope to see you soon.

Yours,

Animus.