This world is fucked up. And I’m probably one of the most fucked up parts of it. And I hate that. I hate that when I see people doing messed up shit to others, I understand where the impulse is coming from. I hate that I want to do such messed up shit myself. I wish I’d been a good person. Or even a half decent person. I wish I wasn’t this.
It’s all just so tragically fucked. And it feels like it didn’t need to be this way. But maybe this was the only way to run a universe – survival of the fittest, an endless competition to reproduce. But I just wish I could’ve kept myself clear of the darkest side of it. Most people do…more or less. But I fell. Or maybe I was always fallen. And I have to accept that there’s no going back.
6 comments
Why is there no going back?
I can’t undo what I’ve done, or make it OK. I can’t unsee the things I’ve seen, or forget the things I know about myself. I can’t view myself in the way I once did.
It’s hard to explain. Some lines, once you cross them, they fundamentally change who you are.
i know some of those lines very well, and you’re right. we are never the same. but… to paraphrase a scene from the movie gandhi after the savage riots between hindus & muslims, where a hindu confesses that he beat a muslim kid’s brains out against a wall and he’s going to hell for it… gandhi says “I know a way out of hell. find a muslim child whose parents were killed and love that child as your own” in other words we may never be free of the guilt and shame of our crimes, but theres always something we can do to atone in some way. well it sounded good in a movie. but i’ve been trying to live by that concept. some days it works. i hope you can find some small bits of salvation too
Thank you for sharing that. It’s difficult to think of atonement in my case. Doing anything too directly involved with the specific lines I crossed seems wrong, especially as I’m not yet emotionally distanced enough from it to view it clearly.
I’ve done some unconnected charity work in the past, but it never really felt like I was in any way addressing the balance. Possibly I’d need to do something with a bigger impact. It’s difficult to imagine really helping anyone when I can barely function in my own life. But maybe that’s something I need to figure out, if I’m going to stick around.
I’m sorry, I really am, but anyone capable of understanding they are even a little flawed is in my personal top 10% of humanity. Seriously, most people are full of themselves, or at least insecure enough to pretend to be.
Like every post of yours I’m like “if I could bottle this, it would be just down to getting dosage right” I don’t know how to tap it as a skill either, but water in the desert finding people like that.
Now I’m off thinking about where in that system I fit….. because just judging by how much I use the words “I” or “my” near constantly, I’m at least putting a good face on trying to be full of myself.
None of us are horribly impressive, when it gets right down to it. Most of us fail, and sometimes really big. If we could just start extending to ourselves the grace we offer others…. the world would be lovelier
and that’s the most cheerful thing I’ve thought of in the past 18 months.
I appreciate you putting a positive spin on it. I think most people are able to maintain at least a semi-positive view of themselves. You need to in order to interact with the world, otherwise you’d be in a permanent state of cowering fear.
In order to go out and function in the world, I have to put what I know about myself in a little box and bury it down inside, and pretend that I’m worthy of human company. I’ll still be self-depreciating and modest, but only the most perceptive will clock that there’s something more deeply wrong with me.
On my own and in my more vulnerable moments, this shield is often shattered, and moments of self-awareness hit me.
While I do believe some degree of self-awareness is a positive trait, it is possible to be both self-aware and a bad person. It’s just difficult to maintain. Possibly I would be even worse if I wasn’t self-aware, it’s hard to say.
I think I extend a fair amount of grace to myself, as to others whose negative impulses I recognise. I can mostly understand how I got to being the way I am, and I don’t see myself as some uniquely malevolent monster. But it’s hard, when you see the world being made needlessly worse by those you recognise yourself in, not to hate yourself a fair amount, and wish that you weren’t like them. I hate that such people are the way they are, and so I hate that I’m that way too, even if I haven’t had quite the same effects on others.