Day 12 on IWTV: Friendship

Louis again talks about his detachment with feeling. I strongly wonder if a good meditation practice will help us to understand how he feels. But through this he explains his sadness about not forming a real friendship with Lestat, and also that he cannot also have a friendship with the human Babette unless he kills her.

Monsieur Louis, I am not even sure that is truly possible between two human beings. Sure, I've had deep personal friendships in life. Two are married now and busy with their respective families and careers, one is gay with a partner. I, too, am married now, and I love my wife, but I still feel lonely. I think as we become adults, at least to my experience, we lose that "deep" sense of friendship or loyalty or connection we had when we were young, in school. I'm not sure about this. My daughter feels like I have a real connection with her, but is she a friend? She is five years old, almost as old as Claudia was.

I am not sure I have a living soul I can truly confide my all to in this world. Of course my church upbringing says Jesus wants to be that friend. Colossians 1:22 says, "Yet now God has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault." There. God is my friend. This doesn't bring much comfort to outcasts like Louis, though.

Louis obviously had a certain love for Babette, whom he saw as a fellow outcast, and it must have stung him so for Babette to think of him as the devil, and yet through all this it was for Babette's sake he thought of. He wanted the best for her life.

I am also curious, because it was not explicitly said, if at this point the boy also sided with Babette. Did he now secretly suspect he was interviewing the devil?

I remember a nasty break up I had years ago. I found out he had a new boyfriend, and when I confronted him gently, asking him, "Don't you remember what I said? If you ever find someone new, just tell me, and I'll let you go. I know how unfair all this is to you." He said he did remember. "Why didn't you just tell me you found someone new?" His response pained me beyond telling. He said he was afraid I would turn into a monster.

I think we are hurt most by people we love. I thought, I shared myself with him. I let him glimpse my soul. How could he think me a monster? So even in love we can be outcasts. Monsieur Louis, I know how you felt. I saw your vision of an unending night of loneliness. I see now what you mean by detachment. Babette meant to destroy you, and you saved her still.