Discovery

Once every few years you find something that...well... makes sense but depresses you about someone very close. Usually it involves a person you've always held in high esteem, but who does something that makes you second guess yourself. Then you think hmmm... then again... if I was in their position, the action would makes sense. I see how they got there, in spite of their high morality and general goodness.

Then you consider the secondary symptoms: recent personality changes, withdrawl from previous committment and relationships, a sense of distance and disconnectedness in their private life that is not echoed in the public or business life - an indulgence in things they would not condone publicly.

We all have frustrations, and eventually we will most likely indulge those frustrations. We can only resist so long, and it can only be healthy up to a certain point. Fighting the good fight cannot be all consuming. Eventually, without reinforcements, the Alamo will fall.

What they do goes against all they stand for and all that they are. You'd gladly have accepted a sermon from them the day before, but not now... not ever again. The right to preach has been lost, but your love and understanding have not wained. In fact, it puts you closer to your own debased actions. You realize that you're not alone in hypocrisy. This is why we're commanded to obey those who who sit on the seat of Moses, but not to do as they do. Jesus never changes the standards, but he does tell us to adhere to words of wisdom, even if God choses a messenger that does not incarnate that same wisdom in their daily life.

i'm convinced now that the strongest of us will fall. Our pride will be destroyed.

I've never come to terms with the part of the Christian faith which reserves judgement for God. I want people to pay for their actions, or to be rewarded for them, and if I'm the messenger of that justice then all the better.

But no, I cannot be the messenger. If all were right, then I would be annihilated by the very justice I would wish to represent. i'm among the most evil people in thought. So far grace has kept me from acting on what I would do. There's a kind of sickness in my head. A demonic fact of life and a seige set by the devil on my better half. It's not that I've got the normal dark wants, it's a passing from lesser forms of filth into true corruption, into the darkness of unapologetic evil which is easy to label for what it is. On occasion it seems that the only thing that staves off the latter is the former; a drink keeps me from being an alchoholic and the sheesha belies the desire to grab an addictive box of smokes.

I have no inherent good or quality other than that which was given to me. And yet I love virtue. I live for those who reach for more. I know that I stand for everything that betrays my truest nature, but it could not be otherwise. I have to fight the monster lest I become it, no matter what the poets might think. For some of us there can be no moderation, but paradoxically there must be some leeway. A mild degree of calculated insanity keeps me level; makes me impossible to scandalize. It's my sharp glass of scotch that does not dull the mind. We all have a release, mine is to assuage possible guilt, and to capitulate, but to a lesser degree, to those thoughts that can never materialize. I am as I was created, and the creator has taken that into account.