I certainly understand the desire for hermitage. It is very tempting to turn your back on a world you perceive as having turned it's back on you. The road out of this has been a long journey for me with some major setbacks and outright betrayals but I'm happy to say I've been overcoming them, one by one. I am now prosperous and productive, successful in my business with a widening circle of friends and associates who respect me and a blooming future in event production. Above all my desire and ability to make high-quality art is alive and healthy (as you can obviously see).

I still have the capacity to be an aggressively abrasive prick (and still lack the ability to get away with it because I'm pretty) but unlike many if not most sociopaths, I'm acutely aware of and often chagrined by my shortcomings.

Not everything is as I would prefer it, certainly. I have a tremendous continuing responsibility to care for my friend, abandoned in her sickness and helplessness by others. I don't know how that's going to turn out and have to take the situation one day at a time. I have other burdens I must bear for the rest of my life but in all I'm grateful to be in a position to rise to engage these challenges.