One other thing I thought of was when I was asking AJ what I had done that made a difference. After he told me (what I already discussed on here), he said something very interesting. "I didn't want to love you, but you made me love you again."

All of us, I'm sure, have gotten enough education on this site to know it wasn't that simple, that there were lots of other factors involved, even biochemistry, and no one can make anybody do something they don't want to do.

And yet, by following God's leading and with what I learned here, it has been turned around.

I think what he meant was, "I didn't feel any more loving feelings toward you, and I didn't want to. When you continued to show love to me, I felt myself drawn back to you, against my every inclination. And no matter how hard I tried to make them go away, loving feelings toward you began to surface again."

And that's where the tremendous guilt comes in. It's easy to betray someone when you have no care for them. But once Plan A begins its work, and those feelings begin to come back, the affair becomes a very painful place to be. Unfortunately, it usually takes Plan B to make it painful enough to where they want to end it, but they find out that cake-eating isn't as much fun as they'd hoped.

Oh, they enjoy wallowing in it, sure enough, but pay a very high price for every morsel.

Which is where the lighthouse comes in. One moment they're shoveling cake down their throats as fast as they can, from anywhere they can get it. It tastes good, so even though it upsets their stomachs they keep gorging themselves. Then suddenly they wake up and find themselves in the dark, on their hands and knees in the pigsty, and only turnip rinds to munch on. High above their heads, they see a beacon, untouchable, unreachable. They are about to give up in despair, when they remember that they have the map.

By the light flaming above them, they read, "GET OUT OF THE PIGPEN! DO NOT GO BACK TO THE PIGPEN EVER AGAIN!"

Then, if they're smart, they follow the light home.


A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
~ English proverb



Neak's Story