So What Do We Think?

So I will admit to you all that I have been struggling. I have created and destroyed about 4 different versions of my interactions with Michael Alig. I am struggling because this is a story that could be told a million ways, and I ultimately am left trapped by the enormity of it. I have been talking to Michael, pretty much every day, about his past, present and future for a month, and one of my main problems is that we have a similar kind of dark humor that ends up feeling really icky when the context of his crime is constantly hovering like his personal albatross. White, huge, it's wingspan covers my eyes and plugs my ears and I cannot see my way around it. So i cut, and i re insert and i sit and I stare at the window and I wonder about what forgiveness means as a society. According to our Judicial system he is a man absolved. He has done his time, he has been rehabilitated and the rest of us should view him as such. But he is a man marked, forever by his past and I've had a hard time climbing out from under the weight of his crime. Does one crime overshadow all the good in your life? How long should someone be held accountable for a crime committed in your drug soaked youth? More importantly is the question, how do you forgive yourself? How does one sleep at night when you've done a great wrong does it get duller every day...? After 20 years how deeply does this crime still affect him? So i continue to work on this episode, and it hopefully will be done tonight, but here's a conversation I had with my mother after the live show about it. Sorry for the delay as always I'm doing my best, which is never enough. love, Zoe