NOBLE LIMITS:

I will be remembered as a tireless lover, perpetually bringing the chalice of service to my maiden, only to have it smacked aside, tossed to the slobbering dogs, perpetually by the hand of gratelessness. Once I’ve been pushed to the brink of madness it could be no testament to my own finitude but rather to my perseverance, for those who pushed me harboured such short tempers and narrow limits that they would depend upon my patience, only to pretend I was their equal once my patience was expended. It was thus that I was blamed for my own suffering, rendered a victim of my own kindness but of an other man’s device, for my own rage was turned against me, though I only raged against those that I loved, taking my rage (towards those I hated) upon them, when they too took the same rage, and towards the same and proper targets, out on me. How depraved is he or she that blames the victim, for while I lived to believe that the one purpose driving a heart’s beat is to be harmless and to heal those that have been let down, remembering the wisdom of the sages that ensured that victims would not dwell in powerlessness, yet a class of ingrates let me down, for that same virtue whose power they fear when they fall short of it becomes their downfall, and they scorn it as though they had had no part in the infraction but had simply witnessed self-inflicted harm. I have to ask: why did they hesitate to take the harm that they deemed self-inflicted then upon themselves?? What other motive could there be except to lunge to the friend’s rescue, only to discover in the depths one’s own involvement in that same friend’s pain? Only a few times can I now recall when I had to absolve myself of that same guilt, denying to the death that I’d had any part in my friend’s injury, and that was only when the pain that I’d inflicted was my own, for I’d been pushed then to the brink that others have not seen, for they’ve not known such distant limits as were mine. If the pain inflicted was my own, for what they deemed to be betrayal (towards them) on my part was nothing but the breakthrough of my own suffering blood, my bleeding heart overflown and my own feet betraying what had been a noble stance in an ignoble public dance, then what was the failure but their own, again, to save me from the depths of drowning, as I would have plunged in to save them, had it been then THEIR breakdown and not mine?

[({Dm.A.A.)}]