M

The troll has often chided me that no one reads my blog or cares about what I'm saying; she'd use the fact that there are not many comments being posted here as "proof." I've always responded that people are sending most of their comments to me personally. Of course, I could never prove that because most of the people commenting did so privately specifically because they did not want their comments made public.

However, one of my commenters, probably one of the most intriguing of them all, said the following in one of her recent E-mails:

I'd prefer you not to make the comment [itself] public, but you can feel free to say that I've written you and agreed with every one of your points, citing examples in my own relationship with Riin.

The above was written by someone I've mentioned previously: M. Riin's former friend of 27 years. She's been reading my blog since the whole mess started and has actually contacted me on several occasions. What's interesting however is that I did not seek her out; she came to me.

The first time she contacted me, it was a total shock. As I've said previously, I've had very little contact with any of Riin's friends, and M was no exception. It would never have occurred to me to contact her, and it certainly never would have occurred to me that she would contact me. However, I've discovered of late that she and I are birds of a feather in some very profound ways, particularly where Riin is concerned.

My most recent post, "The Pedomorphic Pharisee," struck a particularly resonant chord with M; it was that posting that prompted her to allow me to reveal that she's been contacting me. In a nutshell, she told me that the issues brought up in "The Pedomorphic Pharisee" are exactly the reasons why she didn't try harder to mend fences with Riin when their relationship went sour.

The difference between M and I, of course, is that M recognized right away what it took me a year to finally figure out. She didn't even try to mend her broken relationship with Riin because she recognized immediately that it was a lost cause. She knew that, in order to fix it, Riin would have to admit she'd been in the wrong in some things; Riin can never, ever admit she's wrong about anything. That made any reconciliation impossible.

That, in fact, is what has destroyed all of Riin's relationships. I'm not saying that we (those who love her) didn't make mistakes. We did; all of us. That, however, is the difference between her and us. We can admit we made mistakes; Riin cannot. Relationships can always be fixed (even this mess between Riin and I, theoretically), but fixing a relationship means a willingness to admit fault on both sides. That's where the paradigm falls apart; Riin cannot admit fault.

M is not the only person to show me support in this; not by a long shot. I have noticed, however, an interesting pattern. Those who support me, by and large, E-mail me privately with their comments and tell me who they are; the troll, by way of contrast, makes a public display and refuses to identify herself. I think that speaks volumes about the level of the troll's maturity and how much stock I should put in what she has to say.

The most interesting thing to me, though, is that one of my greatest supporters is someone who used to be one of Riin's greatest supporters, and for far longer I've known her.

Self recrimination is all too easy when a relationship falls apart; one always wonders, "What did I do wrong?" However, if Riin has managed to destroy every important relationship she's ever had, including one it took 27 years to build, maybe the fault isn't with me after all.

It's sad. Even M agrees when I say there is a beautiful person inside of Riin, but the beauty is buried under a blanket of bitterness. As a blanket of snow will, if never melted, eventually become a glacier, so too has her bitterness become a sheet of ice, thick and unyielding, impenetrable, burying the beautiful forest, home to the nymph underneath.

Love provides warmth, but not enough to reach her. Melting that ice is going to take love from both sides, ours and hers. Myself, M, Pete, her mom, her dad, we all still love her, the nymph under the ice, but we cannot reach her if she cannot love us back.

The ice nymph, trapped by her inability to love.