I am very sorry.

I know that it hurts your feelings. I know that. I know that it damages your sense of fairness. I hear your screams of frustration and anger. I understand that there is a sadness that separates you and me, and I understand that there is no easy fix for the situation. I know that there is no way for us to agree. This disagreement has festered over the years; we both feel this rift between us -- due to this topic that you and I, though we care for each other, cannot find a way to agree upon.

We disagree.

We both know how the soul-bearing, impassioned discussion will go. You will shake your head in disbelief and wonder if I even know what equality means. I will wonder how you can ask me to throw aside the moral seed that is planted so close to my heart. You will provide data, seek for me to prove my point with data, and quantify our relative positions. I will feel the sadness tugging at my chest, as you try to pull the roots of my spiritual compass out of my soul. We will reason together. We get to the point where we can discuss solutions, and come to a hypothetical agreement. But it's so hypothetical that it's not even possible. All we can work with are the building blocks that are before us -- blocks which can't come close to constructing something that will satisfy both of us equally.

You're right -- it's not fair. For one or the other of us, anyway. There's no way to make this situation fair and equal for both of us.

To you, I sound like someone from another era that needs to be enlightened. Or just plain mean-spirited. Or evil.

To me, you sound like a teenager that wants me to allow you to do something that I disagree with -- something which I worry will have a sad eternal outcome. "How can you not want me to do this? You have to okay this for me. It's totally fine, everyone thinks so. How can you be so... so... mean? Do you hate me or something?" *Runs off and slams bedroom door*

This has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with hate. This has to do with the sadness in my heart, our conflicting personal understandings of right and wrong, and your need for me to validate where you're coming from. Your emotions, at least as you have expressed them to me so far, are intense and heart-felt. Seeing you struggle makes me cry. It makes me want to hold you close. It does not make me hate you. That is your label for my emotions, not mine.

Yet, I cannot abandon my own still, small voice -- the voice that speaks just to me. It is not your internal guide; yours is different than mine. And I cannot expect you to hear what I hear, just as you cannot expect me to be able to hear what your heart whispers.

I don't want you to change, or to hear me, or to agree with me. You need to be true to yourself. You need to live and love and act according to your conscience. I love that about you, that you have found a way to be happy and clear-minded.

But I need to be true to myself, too.

While I can love you and cherish you just the way you are, I cannot change myself for you. What seems like an insignificant technicality to you may have great meaning to me. It has become so clear over the years that I have to be the way I am, and you have to be the way you are. We know that neither of us can change without losing that which is most important to each of us, respectively.

So, we disagree -- and the sadness grows.

You join the swell roaring "be on the right side of history!" Which is so very you, and just what you should be doing.

In reply, inaudible against the ocean of change, I whisper "I'm trying to be on the right side of eternity."