A friend of mine was arrested today for something that, if true, is despicable. I'm not ashamed to call him my friend because the version of him that I know is kind and selfless, constantly struggling to fit in but always feeling like an octagonal peg trying to fit into a round hole. So very close, which makes the separation that much more frustrating.
I have an empathy for him, for a lot of people, that is hard to understand. When I received the news via text the witch-hunt began. "I always knew that something was wrong with him," was thrown around. I didn't. If I had I would have distanced myself from him. I try to make a habit of avoiding people who are sinister or at minimum have broad swaths of evil painted across their soul. I prefer to dabble in mischievous and the occasional misdemeanor. Felony is too far. Yet I understand, in a way, because I know that good people can do bad things for good reasons. Sometimes people aren't equipped to play the hand that they're dealt at all and choose to throw their cards away. I can't say that I blame them. The reaction is where I differ but I also feel like that is more to chance than any of us really care to admit. Apparently most of my wires connect to where they're supposed to which makes me laugh. If sanity were a horse race I would not put my own money down on Bret Londer. Things could be so very different though. When I'm confronted with a reminder like this I can't help but think back to what would have happened if I would've stood up in that restaurant and flipped the table like I wanted to. Or opened that second bottle of Evan Williams. Or skipped the meeting with the professor. Or, worse, what if I had just rolled with the punches, cramming it all down inside, rotting from the inside out. Some cosmic coin flip made all of those decisions for me. God knows I didn't. Any one different decision could have turned me to the paving stone path that led a couple of police officers to my door. I would have opened it and had that same rush of terror; that the upward trajectory of my life had just been cut short, that I had caused it, and that there was no way to fix it. Self-created helplessness. Real despair.
I feel bad for the victims. Even the most benign tornado ruins farmland and tears down trees. The land will never be the same but over time new plants will grow and the new trees will regain most of the height of their forebears. If I'm being honest my hurt for them doesn't outweigh my hurt for faces that are familiar and shamed. Other people's problems are never quite are as potent. It's harsh, but it's true. For my friend, I hope it's all an awful dream. I hope he was an unwitting participant in a game that he wasn't aware was occurring. Even if that turns out to be the case he'll always have that film of doubt and mistrust on him. Even in the best of scenarios, life will be a hike up a steep mountain made of mud. I hope that through all of it he discovers something about himself and meets fate head on. But in this moment he's dealing with reality one minute at a time, and these words are nothing more than bullshit.
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