I
have been a great friend to many, and I shall not be dispossessed of that
virtue, nor of the consciousness of it, by some degenerate who betrayed me. He
owes me only an apology; I shall accept nothing more from him. The act of
betrayal is a total loss of any ethos in this matter. It was HE for whom
friendship was a technicality employed towards private means. May the record
show with glaring obviousness that any agenda that I pushed was a public one.
Even if I took part in a deception, I was upholding the values of someone I
cared about, and I never conned any one (nor tried to) who had not wronged me
and who would not have pledged loyalty to the same person I cared about (were
he in fact motivated by those ideals of Friendship which I have upheld). No: these
traitors laughed and scoffed at the very word and practice of these ideals, and
it was only by upholding them (both the ideals and the traitors) that I made
myself vulnerable to betrayal. My very pain is my witness, that they cannot
disillusion me nor besmirch my reputation, but that they can only feebly
attempt to escape responsibility for their own shortcomings. That I feel pained
by their devices only proves the degree of empathy I have lingering on their
wretched behalf. They have depended upon me and my sympathy, and they still do.
It is only by giving my SELF that credit now which is due unto ME, and only by
being a friend to my own SELF, that I can find salvation from these vermin.
Besides: it was true that they defied my agenda. Yet their agenda was only to
their selves. How pathetic to be told what a friend is supposed to be by
someone who would not stand by me in my hero’s quest, but would rather condemn
it as a misadventure! I need not to be lectured to from such a wretched
position. I need only to be followed with faith and dignity. Perhaps Camus said
that to be a friend is not to follow nor to lead. But to disavow one’s entire
mission is never the mark of true companionship. The moment of sabotage,
painful and inconceivable before the fact, intolerable after the fact, remains
my witness. I allowed you to defy my will. But not to the point that it blocked
my own path. And if your path was other to mine, then call me not my friend.
For then you walk neither behind me, before me, nor beside me. You walk upon a
totally different road, and you have robbed me at every crossing. It matters
not that I availed myself of your resources, for however short a time. I took
only what I needed for my quest. But at the entire root of your own theft is
narcissism and self-interest. And you took it without my permission. A friend
would never do that. And any time I took any thing “of yours” without your permission,
it was long before I considered you a friend, self-entitled as you might have
been. Even now you steal from me, denying me the apology which is due unto me,
making it clear to set boundaries between your interests and mine, but never respecting
the boundaries I have set of my own accord. A friend does not do this; if he
dissolves boundaries, he dissolves them all. Even now you have no excuse. All
of your spit that you spit up at me falls back upon YOU. And so I need no
warrant for what few claims I make of my own good will towards myself, a mirror
of the good will I have shown unto others. You have all ready, in the very act
of accusation, confessed to all these wrongs.
Dm.A.A.
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