Imagine you had a relatively minor conflict with two of your oldest friends. Afterwards, as they withdrew from you, you remained patient, reassuring when they threatened you, or told you they were unsure that they could ever forgive you, or were angry at you. Imagine you extended friendship to them, no matter how wildly they attacked you.

Now imagine that after a year of this they told all of your friends in common, and everyone in their family, that you were implacably enraged, unforgiving, bent on being right at all costs, sadistic, harshly judgmental and totally unloving.

Then imagine that all of your friends embraced this series of lies, this character assassination. The only problem, everybody agrees, is your immature paralysis, the result of a painful childhood that left you incapable of dealing with your rage.

Now the thought experiment is not imagining how to get through or make peace with these people who, there’s a very strong case, were never really very good friends in the first place, but how do you move on with your fucking life?

$64,000 question, doc.