Vignette XXVIX

Who remembers when I said this?

'Let it be said, "The Quality of Mercy is not Strained".  Once it becomes a strain, what is it?  Ruined?  Or maybe a necessary evil, in and of itself.  What truth is in mercy, what mercy in truth?'

I'm thinking of getting that maxim inscribed upon me.  No, not on my jaw like where I learned it from.  But anyway.  On with the show.  It's almost as if history is repeating itself.  

I'm...recovering from the unexpected and compeltely shattering end to my relationship.   While I saw the signs that it might be ending, I never really thought for a second that it would really happen.  I saw a rough patch as just a bit of a bump in the road, not as a prelude to valediction.  I'm broken and shattered.  Now isn't really the time or place to talk about it.  Another expression I've heard for a long time was "Go to bed with a writer, wake up with shit written about you", and I'm not about to perpetrate that.  It'd be petty, for starters.

But still, everything is so strained.   I feel neither mercy nor closure.  I am weak from heartache, from lack of sleep, from lack of food.  From just the sheer lack of everything.

I wish I could do something.  I wish there was something that I could do that mattered.  That could help.  That could even repair damage.  Some wounds may never heal though.   And I'll always feel the same.

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice.