You'll know why, after the recounting. These conversations took place within a few days, or maybe just over one day. However, he continued to contact me for years onward.
Funny, how much two months can mean to a person... and nothing to another.
Subject: Re: Re: Re: I just reviewed the conversation
From him, to me.Eh, what the hell. As long as the conversation is taking an increasingly hostile tone, I might as well roll with it. Besides, I have no fear of the future. Nothing will happen that was not intended.
(My way of admitting a leap of faith here...)
Of course I was willing to destroy your social life. Note the addendum, which you convienently returned to me: "...knowing exactly why I was doing it." This is right up there with me casually admitting that, yes, I could in fact kill someone in proximity to me if I felt I had cause. It has about the same threat value too. Did you give me cause? No? Okay then, this problem is solved. I make no error in admitting what I am and am not willing to do under extreme conditions. Especially since by the time I told you I would, there was no element of surprise lost, as I had already dismissed it as an acceptable measure. If I were to engage in such an act, I would not have warned you until the last possible minute so as to maximise the emotional damage.
So, yes, I'm willing. And yes, I can be downright ruthless and sadistic when I actually do take the gloves off and set myself to the destruction of another's will. So can you, and if you pretend otherwise, well, let's just say I know better. Intuition.
Well, I thought about outright asking, but I figured that if you didn't tell me the moment of the breakup, that, if it was in fact the case, I'd have to ask in a roundabout fashion. It worked.
My defination of infidelity is a little different than yours. Infidelity to me means...well, I was using adultery as my standard at that particular instance. Hence why I didn't ask. Besides, if you were being unfaithful, this would imply a dishonest nature to begin with, and no, you would not have told me outright if this were in fact the case. The roundabout questioning was partly because I couldn't see your face, and had to guage your words solely by the text you were using and simple intuition.
And as for my suspicions, well, two defenses. One, you did rather spring this one on me. When surprised, I tend to presume the worst. Distrust would be justified on any side of the fence, and if the situation had been reversed, I would have expected it, and wondered what was going on if you continued to trust me absolutely. Two, you are free to view me with suspicion as well if my own bothers you that much. I'm confident I'll pass your standards, just as you have passed mine. So relax.
I obey the laws of man, again, because my covenent with God literally requires me to. And as far as life being a consumable good to be paid for, well, I presume you are referring specifically to the medical field. If not, you'll let me know, or you won't. But I'll go with this presumption for now.
The present system, yes, it is. I have some experiences of my own with this view, and they are just as unpleasant as your own. I don't talk about my sister, because most of the time, it's not relevant. Her constant surgical requirements all but financially destroyed us. So, yeah, I've been there. I don't know how to phrase this, so I'll just say it. Ahem.
I. Am. Not. Judging. You.
At least, not in regards to matters of life or death. As far as I'm concerned, all that you did was necessary, or at least your family believed it was, which is reason enough. If you are seeking condemnation from me, you would have to do something far more serious than that.
Ah, the monetary issue. It's not just that I am getting paid. It's that I am taking the money. The difference? I accept that in exchange for a requested service I will do a particular task in a particular way. If I am not satifisfied with this arrangement, or if I am, in fact, asked to do something that I find morally reprehensible, I have the option of leaving at any time, two weeks notice be damned.
I am aware that my own morality will have to be comprimised if I am to lead. My own morality was comprimised when I chose to serve God. (He has some laws I disagree with.) That's a price. "He who leads shall be the servant of all." And everything that comes with that statement. I won't get to always choose my own morality, unless, of course, my morality happens to conspire to keep me out of office. I would actually consider that an acceptable conclusion to my experiment.
Oh, you misunderstand. I don't care how I'm preceived in the general views. Being viewed as a Templar type is actually quite advantageous. I encourage that. To you, to family, not the case. And you are correct, leaders are not comrades. Machivelli himself wrote as much and the bastard is actually correct. His theory checks out. A leader cannot be preceived as having a favorite. So, yes, it is not a path that others can climb. America is probably the closest I've ever seen to such a power structure and even then it has it's choke points where only X number may pass.
I have thought about these risks and yes, they do worry me. I ask God for the strength to do this. He might reply by shooting down my ambitions. It's happened before.
As I stated earlier, my own brother has called me on that presumptious nature of mine. It works.
You know, I've noticed a trend. You seem bent on pointing out the flaws in the capitalistic mentality i.e. everything has a price. I don't complain about it because their is nothing I can do about it (yet, if anything can be done at all), and I defend it for the same reason I defend anything else: I don't have anything better to replace it should it be lost. I'm all ears if you have a better idea. If not, yes, I understand that it does make life extrordinarily hard. I view it as a faith forger.
Oh, I know you would have challanged me. That doesn't bother me at all. If anything does trouble me, it is that it took you this long. As far as I am concerned, argument, challange, debate, fight, whatever the heck you call it, I consider it healthy, but only if it is resolved. Sometimes, this takes a few times. Sometimes not. Either way, it doesn't bother me, simply because I don't fear confrontation when it does finally come.
Anyhow, look forward to the next letter, despite the expected tone :P
Take care, Jo.
Subject: A few observations
Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 2:44 PM [note, this is just hours before my birthday party that day.]I've noticed your lack of response over the past several days. I've attibuted several possible reasons to this, but I'm going to presume the most likely reason: you dislike hostile discussion, or being preceived as promoting it. It doesn't bother me at all, but I'm presuming it does bother you.
Another thing that strikes me as funny is our stark contast between our e-mails and our daily interactions. Seriously, you'd think we had a simmering dislike of one another, but what's the conversation? "Yeah, I'll have your birthday present ready. Look forward to showing up."
Anyhow, the point. I've noticed your reasoning for our breakup seems entirely based on the possiblity of future events occurring based on presumed tolerance levels for one another. Yes, I know. I just pointed out that you dislike these discussions. Forgive me for my refusal to simply give up. :/
The hypothesis that you are concealing something remains valid, but with an addendum: I'm curious, is it possible you are hiding information from yourself? This actually seems to happen rather frequently. The only question is, what information could you possibly be hiding?
The first time a possible solution occurred to me, there was an internal debate over whether or not I should just tell you, or use conversation to force you to come to that conculsion yourself, forcing the idea home that you knew it the whole time. The reason for the second, more roundabout technique was simple: in the event that it proved to be not the case at all, at least you would not have that ammo to fire at me, and in fact would have discounted it.
And then it occurred to me that if I am in the right at all, this point won't carry any power at all, and therefore I shouldn't fear it. The future does not frighten me, and nor do points of contention.
Simply put, I think you are afraid of choosing between your family and myself. I couldn't help but notice a little timing quirk, perhaps coincidence, perhaps not. Shortly before your decision, your mom asked me if I was willing to go with you when you left the state. I didn't answer, and I presume this was interpreted as no.
To your credit, at least you haven't used the arguement "we" would destroy each other, because there is no "we" to that at all. I have, however, made another observation. For all the pointing out you've done of how I'm a stone, inflexible in my views, note this: I have no problem with your point of views. You are the one opposed to views that clash with your own. In fact, I'm actually going to go as far as to say you seem to think your standard of morality is at its peak, and that no one holds a higher standard than you.
Bear in mind, from me at least, there is no condemnation in that last, merely a theory. Pride is a permittable flaw, as long as it is recognized.
Anyhow, take care of yourself, Joelle.
Ed
(This next email is another reason I've had reluctance to post, but... I said I will not even edit myself. I hate to post this one in particular, out of all of these, because of my excruciatingly raw vulnerability and admittance to self-loathing I do not like to show. But perhaps by baring such painful thoughts -- which by the way, were far stronger in the midst of a post-homelessness, post-near-death-medical-emergency depression -- will help me move on from them, as I cannot bury and ignore them any longer. I can at least look at them and feel comforted to know I am not as angry at myself.)
Subject: Re: A few observations
From me, to him.I didn't respond because believe it or not I just didn't have anything to add. I sent the first e-mail because I realized some things I still felt I hadn't really responded to enough. Then your replied, and I had some more things to say. That's really it.
And I don't dislike you. I get pretty hostile pretty quickly to people who I feel have wronged me, and I would've told you not to come to my party if I thought there were going to be any issues.
And my "reasoning" for breaking up with you is that I don't love you. I notice you keep trying to find more than that even after you said you wouldn't. But really, that's all. As I said, I'm not going to stay in a relationship that my heart isn't in. I would never have loved you. If I had tried to lead you on by staying in such a deceitful relationship, I would've just ended up hating you instead because of the situation. I realized that I wasn't going to fall in love with you a few weeks before I actually broke up with you, but I was trying to think of a non-bitchy way to break up with you that wasn't in public (which is hard, because we're around other people almost all the time). So you can keep searching for other reasons, things that don't say, "She just wasn't into me that way," but you won't find anything but frustration down those paths of thought. Creating rationalizations for conclusions you want to be true doesn't make them true. It just makes it more painful.
It's just that I noticed post-dumping that there were additional reasons why it couldn't work anyway. Perhaps if I held that kind of affection for you, they'd all be overlookable, since as they say you can stand to be with someone you love no matter how they are. But when you only like someone as a friend, trying to force anything more than friendship out of that turns into a guilty twinge, and then a tedium, and then resentment towards oneself and the other person and then other couples (just because), and then you end up with one of those couples that does nothing but insult each other all the time because there was never anything in the hollow romance in the first place. Dramatic foretelling, yes, but I know myself well enough to know this. I can feel when I get irritated at someone else out of guilt and annoyance for my own situation (which was a false one, and few things can churn my insides quicker than carrying out a deception).
Anyway, I felt I could go ahead and stuff a lot of words into not many paragraphs, since you took about three paragraphs of "blah!" to actually say something yourself. :p
"I think you are afraid of choosing between your family and myself."
"I couldn't help but notice a little timing quirk, perhaps coincidence, perhaps not. Shortly before your decision, your mom asked me if I was willing to go with you when you left the state."
"You are the one opposed to views that clash with your own."
"I'm actually going to go as far as to say you seem to think your standard of morality is at its peak, and that no one holds a higher standard than you."
I actually have a huge distaste for and disgust with myself most of the time. Every day I say to myself, "Holy fucking shit, what have I done wrong this time?" because for some reason I'm just convinced that there's no way I can't go through a day without completely screwing up and making someone unhappy or, worse, actively harming them. For so many months and years I play over in my head every time I have made an insulting faux pas, or just an outright insult with harmful intent, or been judgmental or cruel, or selfish, or outright violent, and I think of how contemptable I am and I say, "I need penance, I need a sign I can understand to tell me I'm doing the right thing for once, I am so afraid," and I think of how much I hate myself. Most of the time I'm only...holding of a mild antipathy or vague content-ish-ment towards myself, mostly of shallow concerns, but when I enter a depression I fill up with nothing but self-loathing. Do you know why I study not only the Bible but other religious texts as well, and read books of Maxims and etiquette and things written by old archaic dead people? Well, actually, you didn't know that, because we've only known each other for a few months and we don't actually KNOW each other. We can draw a lot of presumptions but really it's just throwing darts in the dark. But why I do that? Why do I cautiously ask people what they mean, why do I try to be polite and not pick fights and avoid confrontation if it's unnecessary, why do I review my days to see what I could have done wrong? Because I know I'm exactly as evil as everyone else, and I just want to...try to get closer towards some kind of selflessness that might perchance be inspiring to at least one person. I don't want to be that kind of person that a stranger I wronged in passing looks back on and says, "God, what an asshole, I can't believe people these days." I'd hate to be that person. I'd want to be the person that they say, "Huh, that was nice." Or something along those lines. Or even nothing at all. I just don't want to be an asshole. I already feel like one a lot of the time.
If I didn't think anyone was better than me, I wouldn't look up to them and envy their character traits so much, now would I? But you wouldn't know that. You just like to make statements about how people feel because "No harm done, if I'm wrong I'm just corrected", right? Well guess what, making hasty statements can be pretty detrimental sometimes.
And anyway, no flaw is permittable. God says every sin is equally condemning. If you have to tell yourself something you know is unkind is acceptable just because you admit to it, then that's just another rationalization of something you don't want to change thinking about.
Don't you remember how I told you that the way Jula hurt me, as hard as she could, was by telling me I was a snob? How that particular insult has haunted me all the way from my childhood? How I've tried to escape by putting up a non-confrontational front of humility and honesty? Yes, I'm full of pride, and I HATE myself and what I've done because of it.
I've let good people get hurt, emotionally and physically. It will never, ever leave me.
So like I said, there's a difference between stating what you think is true and just saying shit you hope makes the other person feel bad about themselves. You know what you said.
(Looking back on this now I almost laugh at how many times I said he was a good person. THAT was my true delusion.
Recall that in the first conversation, I said I would only evict someone entirely from my life and friendship if I find them vile, debase, immoral or otherwise completely unpleasant.
I have done just that to him. This I never do lightly. THAT IS AN IMPORTANT FACT.)
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