My first instinct was to prolong my ignorance. I didn’t want to know. Claims to the contrary are invented or imagined. Ignorance was lonely, but bearable, and lacked the inevitable apathy and casual cruelty that seemed to be the fate of knowing. The paradox, of course, is that the sheer audacity, once understood, brought calm rather than the anxiety or pain I was expecting. We say we lie to protect the other person’s feelings, but really what we’re doing is avoiding our own discomfort and withholding the only thing that can actually help the other person.
I had the epiphany that so much of everything I thought was spontaneous was actually premeditated, and probably on a checklist. After all the cosmic promises there was no meaningful deliberation at the end. I looked, and hoped, but there was no sense of loss. No mourning. Just the calculated efficiency of a hired killer.
Sadly, our conspicuous, public proclamations of affection given in May eventually became a threat to her freedom, and all but predicted the invocation of the worst-case scenario. I did not even consider the possibility of it being used as an exit strategy even as it was happening all around me.
It was quick, it plausibly explained a change that couldn’t have been predicted, it minimized culpability, mitigated embarrassment about a widely misunderstood decision, it allowed the denial of proclivities, represented rebuttal as retaliatory, and generated enough disgust to preclude concern about a quick abandonment, casual divorce, and certainly no questions would be raised out loud about the apparent overlapping timelines of the replacement. Having seen what that lie looks from both sides now, I’m pretty confident I recognize it, coming or going.
I liken this experience to Hillary Clinton’s though admittedly without as large an audience and on a much smaller stage. At face value Monica Lewinsky is merely a material participant in a personal betrayal. But in so doing, gave Hillary something that no one else had been able to: a situation that could not be denied and the opportunity to witness at close-range her husband’s willingness to save himself at any cost.
I expected a quick and merciless dispatch, and quicker rebound, having witnessed it in April. I expected duplicity in defense of reputation. I was shocked by all the lies. Others warned me of the possibility, but I disregarded them with the sincere belief that I wouldn’t have to consider it in my defense. Ignoring several chances to recant, a disconnect was revealed, so vast that I no longer had any urgency to reconnect it. Or even understand it. Like Hillary, the scope of the act and the subsequent breach in ethics has actually given me clarity and calm. Now that I know she will do anything to save the myth she has created, there’s nothing else to worry about. I have my first real consolation of the worst-case scenario
And for all that, it’s not even the worst part of everything. Individual sadness eventually subsides. But the irreparable damage to the collective belief in what is possible will probably never be made whole again. It’s difficult to believe that it even exists. IT! The unnamed catalyst without which not there can be no love or true faith. Need is not quite belief.
The fall of a person at every level, from an individual man to Man as we see ourselves when we are at our accomplished best, doesn’t usually happen in one calamitous plunge from the heights of glory. But rather, it is the little things we choose to do, by ourselves, when we think there’s no one watching, or when this one time doesn’t matter. It’s how the path of least resistance becomes the only way in or out, and the only way we know to go. We make small compromises, but in the most important places and the result is the slow-motion free-fall of our self-actualization. Eventually we end up lower than where we started. We look around, incredulous, as if being sprawled out on the floor required a fall from grace to get there.
Monica’s gift to Hillary, and the worst part about everything
My first instinct was to prolong my ignorance. I didn’t want to know. Claims to the contrary are invented or imagined. Ignorance was lonely, but bearable, and lacked the inevitable apathy and casual cruelty that seemed to be the fate of knowing. The paradox, of course, is that the sheer audacity, once understood, brought calm rather than the anxiety or pain I was expecting. We say we lie to protect the other person’s feelings, but really what we’re doing is avoiding our own discomfort and withholding the only thing that can actually help the other person.
I had the epiphany that so much of everything I thought was spontaneous was actually premeditated, and probably on a checklist. After all the cosmic promises there was no meaningful deliberation at the end. I looked, and hoped, but there was no sense of loss. No mourning. Just the calculated efficiency of a hired killer.
Sadly, our conspicuous, public proclamations of affection given in May eventually became a threat to her freedom, and all but predicted the invocation of the worst-case scenario. I did not even consider the possibility of it being used as an exit strategy even as it was happening all around me.
It was quick, it plausibly explained a change that couldn’t have been predicted, it minimized culpability, mitigated embarrassment about a widely misunderstood decision, it allowed the denial of proclivities, represented rebuttal as retaliatory, and generated enough disgust to preclude concern about a quick abandonment, casual divorce, and certainly no questions would be raised out loud about the apparent overlapping timelines of the replacement. Having seen what that lie looks from both sides now, I’m pretty confident I recognize it, coming or going.
I liken this experience to Hillary Clinton’s though admittedly without as large an audience and on a much smaller stage. At face value Monica Lewinsky is merely a material participant in a personal betrayal. But in so doing, gave Hillary something that no one else had been able to: a situation that could not be denied and the opportunity to witness at close-range her husband’s willingness to save himself at any cost.
I expected a quick and merciless dispatch, and quicker rebound, having witnessed it in April. I expected duplicity in defense of reputation. I was shocked by all the lies. Others warned me of the possibility, but I disregarded them with the sincere belief that I wouldn’t have to consider it in my defense. Ignoring several chances to recant, a disconnect was revealed, so vast that I no longer had any urgency to reconnect it. Or even understand it. Like Hillary, the scope of the act and the subsequent breach in ethics has actually given me clarity and calm. Now that I know she will do anything to save the myth she has created, there’s nothing else to worry about. I have my first real consolation of the worst-case scenario
And for all that, it’s not even the worst part of everything. Individual sadness eventually subsides. But the irreparable damage to the collective belief in what is possible will probably never be made whole again. It’s difficult to believe that it even exists. IT! The unnamed catalyst without which not there can be no love or true faith. Need is not quite belief.
The fall of a person at every level, from an individual man to Man as we see ourselves when we are at our accomplished best, doesn’t usually happen in one calamitous plunge from the heights of glory. But rather, it is the little things we choose to do, by ourselves, when we think there’s no one watching, or when this one time doesn’t matter. It’s how the path of least resistance becomes the only way in or out, and the only way we know to go. We make small compromises, but in the most important places and the result is the slow-motion free-fall of our self-actualization. Eventually we end up lower than where we started. We look around, incredulous, as if being sprawled out on the floor required a fall from grace to get there.