I almost added another page of memories before this one, but decided to return to the present time because I feel like this was enough to illustrate enough of what they were going through at the time they were first friends. I’ve always made it a point to try and get readers of my work to think in more subtle tones than good or evil by way of making all the characters flawed. The hope has always been that it would foster deeper thinking about what other people are going through and what motivates them to become at odds with us, or us with them. Thomas has already expressed that he’s open to rekindling his friendship with Patty, but he’s someone who internalizes betrayal very deeply. Just jumping back into what they had isn’t easy for him. At the same time Patty forgives easily because she spent her whole childhood trying to rationalize her father’s flaws. She’s trained to find the good in people as a survival tactic. Additionally, she knows that she was in the wrong on some level in various situations. Not maliciously, or even consciously in some instances, but still not exactly on the moral high ground. Humans desperately want things to be yes or no, but a lot of the time things are kinda. She made mistakes. Without spelling it out I expect her goal wasn’t to ruin a friend group, she just didn’t realize the course she was on was going to end at that outcome. People don’t always deserve mercy, or sympathy, but in the vast majority of situations, in the course of everyday life, they do. You don’t have to render it up the second they’ve trespassed against you, but giving yourself even a few seconds to consider it is generally wise. I can sit here and try to explain it for hours and never be able to deconstruct every situation satisfactorily. Even the most mundane situations can be so infinitely complex that it would take years to fully lay out all the contributing factors. Sometimes you just have to make a call in the moment and I hope that my work makes a little room for grace in your calculations.
Just to be clear however, there are evils and harms that are inexcusable. I also hope that in the moment you will be able to recognize those as abhorrent. Even that is not always easy.

I guess I’ll leave it here for now. I should probably call attention to the Patreon, Subscribestar, Ko-Fi, and what have you, since I haven’t been doing that regularly for some time now. Since ads are functionally valueless now sustaining this story really does fall to the people who enjoy it. I hope there are more to find out in the world even if I’ m not sure how to do it. I found my document with the reviews I asked you for in the comments the other day. It seems like that happened a lifetime ago, but it was just before we found out about mom’s cancer. It hasn’t been that long, but it feels like month and months. I foolishly believed that things were going to start trending upwards right before that. I had a loose plan. Now I’m just holding things together. Still, holding things together is better than picking up the pieces. That’s something at least. I will return on Friday with more of my suboptimal saga. Until then, construct additional pylons.

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Poor girl. It can be easy to bulldoze through what can’t easily be fixed, when you’re caught up in doing things your own way and damn the consequences… especially when that’s what you’ve been shown, and praised for, your whole life.

“You know how dad is.” There it is, the phrase so many use to justify the horrible actions of others, all you gotta do is substitute dad for anyone you want and it works. Patty really was in a bad situation, it was her dad after all, but I think she’s come to realize that excusing people bad actions, even if their family, is never the correct choice. It’s a hard lesson to take, to accept that making excuses just enables people like her dad to keep being assholes, but it’s one we all have to learn eventually. I wonder if she had a second chance, would she have stood up to her dad? Maybe kept hanging out with Thomas in secret? We may never know

Really, there’s nothing she could’ve done in that situation. It was her dad and she was at most, looking to be 18-19.

Try standing up to a parent at that point and you’re likely screwed. All you can do is say “You know how they are.”

And sadly, that goes for a lot of people who people excuse with “You know how they are.”

With a dad like that, usually one of two things happen to the kid–they become just like dad, or they get ground down. I had a friend with a dad like that, and I would just marvel as they would start shouting and cussing and banging things at each other, behavior that was completely alien to me, and I kept expecting them to throw fists. My friend was really nice, but he could fly off the handle, as he was raised. I also had a friend with a mom like this; my friend walked on eggshells and was just terrified of her. Neither of these are ideal behavior but trying to tell people to undo 18+ years of learned behavior at the drop of a hat, that’s not feasible. Furthermore, just because her dad is like that, doesn’t mean he’s a terrible person himself; best guess is that he loved his daughter, raised her, cared for her, provided for her, tried to push her to do what was best for herself. Doesn’t mean he wasn’t ALSO a jerk with a bad temper, but it doesn’t sound like he was the devil incarnate that she needed to run away from and cut out of her life forever. So from a moral perspective, he may have done wrong, but she also owes him immensely and throwing that in his face over a single mistake, I don’t know that that is more righteous. And from a practical perspective, she was probably broke, in a tiny 1-stop town in the middle of nowhere–going off on her own was technically possible, I’m sure, but not exactly an easy path to take without extremely good cause. You say this applies to alot of people, and sure, it CAN, but there is a world of difference between your parent/guardian who raised you and cared for you, and a distant relative or a neighbor or your boss.

Like Jackie said, alot goes into how we behave. I don’t think she was being that terrible, and maybe even the dad wasn’t being that terrible, just jumping to conclusions. What’s annoying is, to me, her current behavior; Jackie gives a reason, but it’s still extremely irksome to me when someone tries to basically dictate to another how long they are allowed to be hurt or mad, ESPECIALLY when it’s the person who did the wrong telling the person who suffered the wrong “Well, I am personally over hurting you, so why aren’t YOU over me hurting you?” as if that’s remotely the same. She really needs to stop trying to bargain with Thomas, like she can just convince him to stop feeling his feels, and instead just say, directly and sincerely, “I am sorry, I know I was wrong, but I want to make it up to you–please tell me what I can do to start making amends.”

As a kid, I had a friend who informed me in so many words that we couldn’t be friends anymore because ‘my dad doesn’t want me around black people. Sorry, you know how it is’.

I lost touch with him, I couldn’t tell you where he is now or what happened to said person. I just know that the memory has stuck with me two decades and change later. Why wouldn’t this stick to Thomas of even less time.

I believe it. My dad told me once, as a young teen who had never been on a date and was not even really that into girls yet, that if I ever date a black girl, don’t bring her around. He worked with black people, he had black friends, ones he would invite around to the house for birthday parties and even Christmas dinner with our family, yet he said this. Just came out of freaking nowhere, and I still don’t know if it was a broad anti-black sentiment or if he specifically had an issue with black women, but it’s stuck with me for decades as well as this surpreme “WTF dad!” moment. I doubt he even remembers it; people can never predict accurately what sort of statements or experiences will be forgotten by a kid, or live rent free in their heads forever.

3031 Speed Of Memory 3: Age Of Apocalypse.

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