An Austere Farewell:

Today is the last day of your month of birth.

Tomorrow I intend to see my old tome again.

It is, after all, my possession.

I was only generous enough to lend it to you.

Take it as representative of our entire correspondence.

If there is any hope left for you, it is that you will have learned this much:

That you are not born equal to any one.

If you would find solidarity with any one or competence at any thing, you must earn it.

I have done you the service of reading and criticizing your writing.

You have had a competent teacher.

I have written my entire life.

I have even been called a genius.

It was entirely for my competence with language.

No set of material skills, not even musical (though I would have had it otherwise gladly) has earned me that title.

You have not been called a genius.

You would not feel insecure or inferior in my presence.

You would understand my attitude, if not my ways, rather than to presume that I am trying to trick you into feeling this way.

You would own up to your own feelings.

You would understand what they mean.

Or you would not feel them in the first place.

And I would be able to work with you as equals, mutually striving towards a Great Good by constant criticism, like two friends climbing a chasm by pushing each other into his respective wall, acting as one body with four feet. (Such as in The Emperor’s New Groove.)

And you would have made your status known to me.

For I all ways recognize a kindred soul.

I saw it in Alanna.

I see it in strangers.

I see it in acquaintences.

And even if I’d overlooked it in my rage, you would have brought it directly to my attention.

I would not have to mention it now.

And admit that even your own friends marveled at me.

They did not do so with you.

They called you crazy for even trying.

My friends do not do that, even if yours do.

And even some of yours qualified their criticism of me by insisting that I was brilliant.

I have no evidence that they have done so of you.

Why would they not defend your honour in my presence?

I only have your word that they take offense to how I speak to you.

It is hardly convincing, even if true.

If they were so convinced, they would have spoken up.

You could have learned much from me.

But you are insolent.

Instead of reciprocating my kindness with respect, you strain my patience to its limits.

You do not work to earn back my own respect.

And you have not shown me such kindness as would merit respect towards you.

I have no reason to regard you more highly than myself.

And yet in your own self-defense you have constantly required that of me.

[You will say now that you wanted only Equality.

Did you work towards that goal?

Did I see the results?

Or was it a demand made of me, as of an inferior?

Even now it is YOU condescending upon ME.]

If condescension could be a sin, then you would be the most condescending person that I know.

If my hope in you is not misplaced, you will meditate upon this long.

If it IS misplaced, you will retort.

And repeat the cycle.

But this time I shall not be party to it.

I shall be free of you instead.

Instead of respect and improvement you reciprocated with abuse and insult.

You lied to protect your vainglorious self-entitlement.

You hid from yourself in your so-called friends.

You would sooner use false, unenlightened criticism as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility than use my enlightened criticism as an opportunity to improve.

I do not know what is the matter with you.

Didn’t you have a childhood?

Was there not the promise of one day being GREAT at some thing, but only by subordination to a discipline?

Who are YOU to be so GREAT as to demand respect prematurely?

Even now it ought to be obvious to you that I care excessively.

I will not be around to receive answers to these questions.

Even this letter is a thankless task.

If you are to take any thing away from this, may it be this:

… That the TRUTH, if offered freely, is to be accepted even without adornment. Beggars cannot be choosers, and your starvation for Truth and Divinity is made more obvious by your decision to surround yourself with people who have none to offer you, but would condemn you for your search.

Now *I* condemn you. But not for your search. Rather that you did not search ENOUGH on your own, to figure this out FOR YOUR SELF, and instead chose to depend upon me.

… That RESPECT is not owed to you simply for Being. The world will not bend to your ARBITRARY will. People of superior character must never be made to even spare a SECOND trying to make sense of your perspective. Their duty is much too precious to be wasted on some willful degenerate who DEMANDS respect because he cannot COMMAND it, and who would rather exploit the amorality and nihilism of his environment for personal gain than to work in its reformation. No person of noble character can rightfully be made to hear your say on matters of import. You must be of your own nobility and rely less upon the presupposition that people will value you as highly as you do yourself. I have had to choose my family over you, just as I had to choose Alanna over my room-mates in Cleveland, Ohio. I did this out of a sense of DUTY. I did not let my sense of offense and betrayal at the fact she chose K. over me to stop me from this duty. Ever.

… That you cannot hide within the crowd. I know when you are lying. I know it when you have to use some appeal to the Universal Love of God in place of a convincing warrant. Your God is too soft on you. He does not wake you up to your failings. I have had to berate myself incessantly for years to get to where I am. (I wish it were otherwise.) How dare you to berate me now? When some one condescends upon you, you NEVER fight back, especially if that person does so offering friendship and support. You subordinate yourself. You LISTEN. I have had to EARN the self-respect that you take for granted. If there was any thing of lasting consequence that I did in your favour, it was that I dispossessed you of this sense of self-respect. If I did so, then you will know that it was because you had not earned it. You are old enough to shed that narcissistic cocoon.

… And finally:

I never tried to put you down.

I tried to pull you up.

But you tried to pull me down.

That was why I let you go.

Poetically,

Dmytri Aleksandrovich Andreev.

Dm.A.A.

T.S.S.