Do you think there is a benefit in doing that?
I made mistakes. I said things that I should not have said. But it was not with the purpose of causing emotional distress. It was a matter of stupidity and insensitivity, not evil.
Sometimes things are said in anger that we wish we had not said. This happens in real life, it happens in e-life.
In real life, when friends fight, they usually do it in private, so the words are not spread out over the universe, and only hurt those two. The words cannot be unsaid, but at least they are only said between the two.
In e-life, when friends fight, and yes, Poet and I were friends who fought, what is said in anger not only cannot be unsaid between the two, they cannot be unsaid to all the others in front of whom the fight was taking place.
And, as we have seen even in the highest offices of our land, in some cases the real storm of criticism arises not from the original acts, but from the political or personal capital that is made of them by one's enemies. One step leads to another leads to another and on and on.
You have characterized my behavior as boorish, and in places wrong, and I accept that.
But it has not been intentionally evil.
And in the end, even to quell the tide of abuse, even with her permission, I decided I could not disclose those secrets of Poet the exposure of which I feared would do her irreparable harm. I knew I would be attacked for it, I said I would be attacked for it, and I was, but I made the decision to endure that rather than disclose those things, and more, which Poet had told me privately and trustingly in the time of our friendship.
It might not be much of a point of virtue on which to hang one's hat.
But I think it is not nothing. |
