Penance

When you prohibited responding to your last message I thought it implicit that you were also taking responsibility of reconnecting. But, sense of finality, wrapped in that message, have started unraveling itself to me now. I am now becoming aware that it was not a message but a termination order.

Your message, which did a perfect job of conveying your hurt, made me believe that, perhaps, I did deserve some punishment! Any act of physical or verbal violence, however necessary one might feel, demands penance to cleanse oneself of the resurrected traces of animal instinct and be human again. Therefore, I, with difficulty, resisted the temptation to write back to justify and accepted the punishment pronounced by you, as penance.

Reformation is implicit in punishment, therefore punishment is a pious act. It is a suggested penance based on some form of system, legal, religious or social. It gives strength to both, one who pronounces it, and one who bears it. First one gains as a protector of morals and the other one as a reformed soul. However, execution can never be a form of punishment, because anything that takes life forfeits the moral stand for cruelty. And all cruelty is born of fear. So, pl let me know what is frightening you?

-Anatomy of An Extramarital Affair