LEARNINGS:

We have all had lessons to learn from this ordeal.

I have had to learn to stand up for myself, to have fortitude, and to retain my self-respect.

I KNEW that I had done everything right, so I needed only to continue, to persevere, and to allow it to be seen. I needed not convince my enemies, and as for my friends, they would be convinced by my actions as much as my words.

She has had to learn discernment.

She had to learn that she cannot just treat people however she pleases.

She had to learn that things and people are not all ways what they first appear to be to her.

And she had to learn that simply the act of MAKING a decision did not make it Right by default.

She is no autocrat. A freedom-fighter cannot afford to be. And the boundary betwixt autonomy and autocracy is a thin line.

After a year had past, she could no longer deny this fact: that despite all the pain, it was I, not you, that had been loyal to her. And I won a fight that I had not myself picked. And she apologized for her own part in your aggression.

You have yet to learn this lesson:

To stop defending yourself when you have it on the authority of the person you have wronged that you are in the wrong. To stop resisting arrest for your own misdeeds, violations that you would not tolerate in my place but would use to excuse even greater depravity on your own part. And to stop trying to preach to me about things which I KNOW were NOT misdeeds every bit as much as I KNOW that yours were misdeeds towards me, for both have infringed upon my human freedom unjustly.

You are not in a position to pass such judgments, and you admit to it.

I have never confessed to this degree of sin. I never will, because I never will be guilty of it. So I will not have to. And I offer it to no one as an excuse.

You have to stop taking advantage of people who are kind to you by accusing them of taking advantage of you. You have to subordinate your will to common standards so that it never harms anybody again. You have to learn when to use that will and when to withhold it, because the will of your neighbor is more important. You have to learn the loyalty you crave from people. And you must never again allow yourself to benefit at another’s expense.

These are all just different ways of saying the same thing:

That something is not “good” just because it is of benefit to the person who does it.

That it “worked for you” is not a vindication but the summary of the problem.

No one will ever take you seriously when you say things like that. Why should they?

The simple fact that YOUR choice was of HARM to someone else is sufficient to call it YOUR MISTAKE. And so your happiness is of no consequence. No one cares. You can be happy in the Wrong and miserable in the Right. People only care about the Wrong and Right. Your happiness is only of value to them if it is won justly.

And this is the last thing you have to learn. Since I have spoken in threes for myself and for her, I shall sum up your first two lessons first: Loyalty and Justice. Of course as I’ve implied the first sums up the second, and vice versa. You cannot have one without the other, just as you cannot have Individuality without Solidarity.

My third lesson is this:

Peace.

That Goodness is not a competition.

It is sufficient that I should feel my own Goodness transgressed upon that you should shed all pretense of defending yourself. And this transgression I have felt for years, including the time that you tried to subordinate my will to the will of your peers at the Beach when I KNEW that I was in the Right.

You cannot claim that same self-knowledge. You have violated every moral imperative imaginable. You don’t have that sort of ethos. And if you use this as an excuse to find fault with me you will only continue to bastardize goodness for your own purposes.

Goodness is not some battle you can win.

It is a common goal. And you broke that pact.

Admit it and then you can start to recover.

I will not have my conscience subjugated to anyone. So think not to appeal to your own. I know from the fact you contradict me that you have none. Goodness is either a common goal or a façade. And only in the company of your like have I ever encountered the latter in place of the former. I will not have her corrupted by it again. You really are the joke that you accuse others of being if you think that your track record entitles you to judge of mine. Subordinate yourself, get over yourself, (to use an idiom that you employ) and admit your wrongs. If you try to defend yourself you will only make matters worse for you, and everyone will see just how pathetic your attempts at escaping both public accountability and spiritual development really are.

Learn your lesson.

Dm.A.A.