Numb, faint hope

You know, it’s really been a fine 2009 but for this thing.

I suppose the trendy, mushy, Oprahfied thing for me to do would be serialize the entire situation in agonizing detail, as if fidelity of narrative somehow compensates for the inherent invasions of privacy and the vulgarity of excessive preoccupation.

But I won’t.  Whatever other sins of self-absorption I commit on this blog from time to time, I do want to try to stop short of wallowing in bathos.

I am certain my friend is hurting, perhaps more deeply than he ever has, and that much of it is self-inflicted.  I am also certain that he and I have consistently held one another to high moral and ethical standards.  I accept that true compassion for someone requires continued respect for those standards.

If they continue to live in him at all, then they’ll be there on the other side of the acute situation.  Any resumed relationship between us will be the better for it, lacking the additional awkwardness of tortured rationalizations of expediently jettisoned principles.

Conversely, if they have perished, then the game has already ended anyway.

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