Deplore Ability

Deplorable was my favorite word at the time. Perhaps it was an enjoyment of the familiar or some subconscious cry for help. Perhaps it was unconnected to anything as I often had found myself admiring some word most of all and also generally never seemed to consider it related to Karma or the direction of my life. I guess in this case I was more unsure. And in a predictable representation of guilt, I felt certain that the gods must be angry and half expected to be struck down with some obscure, incurable illness.
Physically I was healthy as ever - maybe mentally too. Only. I continued to sneak the word deplorable into all of my communications. In picking a restaurant I'd say "I know you really like that place but I find the quality for the price deplorable". In an editorial I mused "The current administration's deplorable agenda is summed up by their response to Russia's heavy handed but measured remarks". In another article I littered the page with word as if I'd spilled a cup of literary coffee and permanently stained the paper.
My editor, my friends and casual readers began to find me insufferable. At first my friends thought it was some intra-office bet. My editor meanwhile thought I was wasting his time to get back at him for a story he'd nixed. My readers began asking in their letters if I even knew what the word meant. Some asked if I was ok, maybe genuinely concerned that I was losing my mind.
But I was only obsessing over the word, harmlessly. That is - until the day it appeared in another's handwriting.
I did not recognize the script, nor the name, but the words stung me with the pincer of a suppressed memory reintroduced to a fragile mind. I was shattered when I first read it. Completely, entirely destroyed. At the time, I was sure my heart had burst. I was delirious and exhausted. I reread the words and knew I was still horribly, deplorably alive.
The letter was a livid response to an article I'd left unwritten. An article of a particular magnitude for which I had not had the courage to pen. Nor had my limited mental fortitude allowed me to think of the inspiring events in the month that followed them. After the first day it hadn't even been difficult to forget. I'd done nothing empirically wrong. Nothing illicit. Perhaps morally ambiguous but I definitely not reprehensible. So why did my conscience persist in anticipating punishment when logic insisted this was not possible.
Perhaps.
My general attitude was not hindered by a worldview that suggest and omniscient and active God. The letter did not convince me that there was a supra-natural legal order of morality by which we are all judged. It did, however, make me fear this possible truth. I was carrying a makeshift bandanna sack full of moral guilt and was crumbling under its weight...