I have been thinking about what you said about this being sad story. I was sort of taken aback when I read that but I guess it is because of what I said about A____ 'having no chance'.
I will qualify that today by saying that he had no chance to make his way in the kind of society which I inhabited for many years: [respected, accepted, normal, comfortable, well-off blah-blah. . . .]
I too was effectively dismissed from all of that in the twinkling of an eye following my arrest in 20___, and I too had to learn to live in a different kind of world.
What I didn't mean was that he had no chance of happiness, any more than I do [or don't] in the more limited way in which I now must live.
Far from it, comparative poverty, limitation, rejection . . . none of these are good things, but, far from leading me away from God, (in the way that my previous 'normal' and affluent life so often did) they can lead us towards Him.
'He puts down the mighty and lifts up the weak.'
This is a sentence I understand personally from both ends! I am thinking that there must be many people who visit this board who understand this too, but perhaps we don't talk about it often enough?
When it comes to matters of the spirit, the successful and the wealthy are at a real disadvantage . . . [society, of course, hates us for saying things like this]