Correspondence 3

(For a newer draft of this letter within the completed series of letters, click here.)

Dear Sophia,

I knew the limitations of your forgiveness from the outset. I did not, however, presume it would be so easy to come by. For all of your kindness, I remember you could be quite stern. I suppose that is my last memory of you. You swore never to "grant succor to a louse" again, I believe. (Which I must say was an apt description of my behavior.) I am glad you decided to break that promise for me and I hope to make it evident that I have begun to change--though it really is just a beginning.
I have needed a priest or priestess for a while now, and am in such a fragile state that I must take the opportunity. I am a pariah now. All the circles I used to travel in have gotten tired of me. The loops opened long enough to cast me and and then closed back. Consequently, I have spent more time in solitude than I am accustomed to. I cannot discern whether my sadness if from loneliness or from learning for the first time what poor company I am. Either way, I spend as much time in my preoccupations as my occupation, the rest being lost to sleep or stupor.
As an upshot, I can at least articulate my greatest fear (or my most pervasive one, as the rest can somehow be translated into it): I am afraid that I am not the person I think I am. In the recesses of my mind, I am perpetually disappointed with myself. I have the gilded luxury of considering the nature of that disappointment in the confines of my quite apartment. I have concluded either (a) I always fail to perform at the utmost level I am capable of or (b) I am not capable of the utmost I think I am capable of, which is to say I am not the person I think I am.
This whole description is vague and though you may let the details fall away, I would be further guilty before the judge if I suppressed important information. A case in point: I sell high-end entertainment devices to people who probably won't know how to use them when they get home or won't have enough time to enjoy them because the very reason they can afford high-end entertainment devices is because they are scantly at home. Whatever the case, I do not like my job. I tell myself that it is good to have a job and good to make enough money to pay my bills. I consoled myself with the belief that, were I living in a different time or born into a different family, I would be doing something much more distinguished and attuned to my capacities.
If only that was where the story ended! There comes to mind a recurring suspicion like a dripping faucet in a quiet house: what if the period and my lineage were altered? Would I still be mired in mediocrity? What if I chronically overestimate my own worth and ability? What if this life I'm living really is the best I can do? And so I arrive at my fear of not being the person I think I am. When I was younger and let down by my performance, it was easy to say, "But what does it matter now? I am not there yet, but someday I will be." Such consolations are out of reach now. Vain people cannot long survive in the awareness of their vanity, you know. It requires constant self-deception, which I am having great difficulty in maintaining. I cannot endure the likelihood of my misplaced confidence much longer. To be vain is more pardonable than to be living in vain. At least vanity entails ignorance. To be knowingly living in vain--for that there's no excuse. I think I am simply a worthless man with a conception of worthy men. Worse still, I think it's too late to alter course. What can I, a non-entity, do? All of my actions amount to nil. All that nothing can do is nothing. To be average after so long considering yourself exceptional is to be a living privation. But enough.
I know your task as a priestess is not one of repair (that is for the confessor), so I have no illusions about what is to come of this. I bring it to your attention as much as mine. I am relieved to pour out these over-fermented thoughts and am further grateful for your lent ear.

Honestly,
Alan