For the first time in five years, my once-friend Richard,

I listened to a song that always reminded me of when we first decided to become friends.  It was on rock radio all the time back then, Wings of a Butterfly by HIM.  This must have been around September 2005.  I loved it and downloaded it, so I listened to it all the time while reading your posts and e-mails and researching Orthodoxy.  So it attached to you.

Because our friendship was important to me, the song became a symbol of that, and special to me as well.  But I never told you about this.

For five years, I have avoided that song like the plague.  Took it out of my playlist, skipped past it on MP3 players and CDs.  Because it made me sob.

I think today was the first time I tried to listen to it again.

And it didn’t bother me.

Heck, I listened to it twice, because I missed it so much.

Now I read that the song is about killing something beautiful and pure in order to attain something you want. 

Which is exactly what you did, murdering our beautiful friendship for whatever reason.

Ville Valo in a Kerrang magazine says that it comes from a Greek mythology that they believed that if you ripped the wings out of a butterfly then they would live forever. Would you be able to destroy something Beautiful to live forever. The first verse tells of excitement “the blood on our hands is the wine” “heaven’s ablaze in our eyes” “we offer as sacrifice”. But the second verse shows the regrets they face but they still don’t have to worry about dying, they have become immortal. But they still want forgiveness. “This endless mercy mile” “hell’s freezing over in our eyes” “gods kneel before our crimes”

A whole slew of songs used to remind me of you for various reasons, but this was the last holdout, the last one I still could not listen to.

And now my life is full of new and old friends, various church activities, and clubs.  I no longer need you to stave off the loneliness.

That’s what happens when you nearly kill a child:

That’s what happens when you treat loyal, loving friends like crap:

That’s what happens when you refuse to apologize to and make peace with those friends:

They get over you.

Good-bye.