Okay, there's this
girl.
Her name is Jamie. She has fiery red hair, stands almost five feet soaking wet, has had a breast reduction and is still stacked. She is intelligent; she is opinionated; she takes shit from no-one. She is funny in an unfailingly ascerbic manner.
In short, I was completely crazy about her.
Unfortunately, she is a bitch. Definitions of the word vary incredibly, so here's what I mean: Jamie takes pleasure in hurting people, and her conscience seems to have absolutely nothing to say about it. It took me a long time to realize that, honest-to-goodness no foolin', she *likes* to screw people over. People who have never hurt her.. That, friends and neighbors, makes her a worthless bitch. I honestly wish I could feel any other way about this, but my brain won't let me. It is a simple fact.
I tried to deny it. I told myself that she had been hurt in the past.. it turns out that that doesn't matter. I told myself she was afraid to be kind because once she started being kind, she thought she would go too far, and be far *too* kind, and make herself vulnerable.. pipe dream. I told myself that our definitions of kindness differed.. I won't tell you how I know, but it turns out that's not true. These are the lengths to which I went to try to maintain my death-grip on the belief that she was a worthwhile person.
I was wrong. She was *never* going to be kind, and there would *never* be anything I could do about it.
The point is this -- I had to face a FACT. There are surprisingly few real facts in this life. (Surprising for a science person, at least.) It was a fact I desperately did not want to acknowledge. If I had to admit it was true, I wanted to be able to change it. I couldn't.
The Truth (tm) has always been a sort of mistress to me, in the sense that, when all else has been madness and confusion, I have ever found solace in her steady arms. She has held me upright through the most torrential hurricanes of emotion I can concieve experiencing. She has been exactly as faithful to me as I have been to her. She has been, by and large, a most pleasant consort. Her harshness lies in the way she absolutely refuses to change her mind about anything. If something is TRUE, then it is bigger than you -- it can't be changed. This particular mountain cannot be made to come to Mohammed.
Look deep enough into the smiling leer of mistress Truth, and you begin to see what sharp teeth she has.