ISAIHA 5:20
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
I sit here ashamed. I think about myself far too much, too much. That’s what my problem is, believing I have too many issues. The darkness always comes back in with so much ease. The challenge is getting through it. Do we go over or under? Most of us choose to go back. I go back. Back to the memories of you and him and her and them. It’s easier than going through or above and going under is deceiving. Going back lets you sit in the past and continues on the cycle of pain, that was once inflicted onto you. Dwelling in misfortune feels like dusk in Autumn, you're in bed with the heater on, under clean sheets, you have a filled water bottle on the side table and the orange-red leaves outside your window, are gently blowing in the wind and the sky is a grey purple. It’s sadistic. The warmth of going backwards, when you know you should be going forward because it’s always the best thing for you. We sink back, into ourselves and reel in the pain. You suck yourself into that same familiar room, the one you thought you wanted to run away from. You’re back in bed. It happens again and again. It follows you and you think its forever. Maybe?
You have to be on your best behavior, because regardless of the extremity of life itself, you’ll always find a way back to the room. That room is a choice, you can dance around and be there for however long you want. Emotional inconveniences turn you fragile. You’re vulnerable but alive, back in that same place. You don’t think it’ll happen again, but it does. It continues to happen. You can always get out, but you don’t want to. You don’t want to. The reasons to get out, gets longer whilst you get older, but compared to past violence, it all feels boring, sitting in that space is a comfort. Because what is worse than what happened?
Do I learn to live with this or will it go away with work? Is there an amount of work I need to put in for it to shrivel up and die? The disease of pastness. The past is always greener. Don’t look back. The past follows and fills you with peril. The past is a reflection of your future, good and bad. The past is the past, leave it behind. Why won’t you just leave it behind? Just leave it behind. Leave it behind.
It feels safer to think of him and the other one and then the one before those two, rather, than getting clean and being good. After all the hard, I want easy. Instead, I hid and did things at parties, those things I did, to uncrown your title, to fade the colour of your hair into another’s, dissolve the deepness of your voice and murder the silence that followed. The silence when you left and everything became invisible. After the violence, you left and I made you leave. After drowning in various ways, thoughts of you became comforting, they still are at times. This is a worry and I know it’s like that for many. After drowning, I heard your voice, at night, outside my back and bedroom door, for a year, or maybe two. I checked the locks every night before bed, maybe twice, or thrice. I didn’t sleep without a light. I think that’s why I've had so many boyfriends. So, someone else is in my bed, so I won’t get hurt, so I know the sounds aren’t real, but it didn’t work. I still sleep with a hammer, under my bed. They come back, those sounds, rarely. I’m grateful for this. I thank god, myself and my mother, for the way my mind can be calm.
The presence of pastness, twisted its way into the sanctity of safety. Pastness being pain. I looked for it in the future, drenched, in longing for the past. After, I saw men, all named Cain and laid with them a while. It was for you, I craved, but anyone else would do. My first love, I so desired, I would’ve followed you into the sea, but I didn’t. It’s because I never always agreed with you. No, not always. I thank me, for this somewhat chosen sanity.
It’s four and a half years later and I have only just started feeling now. Now I’m sober, chemically sober, I’m back, maybe for the first time ever in my life. I’m back. I am finally grounded in reality. Not completely grounded as of yet. Everything feels so wretched, so horrible, but it isn’t. There is a knowing that what I’m feeling is real but not the entirety of my reality. Because not everything is wretched. The window I sit at to write, the smile of a friend and their voice when describing a lover, or the sigh of relief from a parent when their child has finally quit smoking, the discovery of a new song that’s truly good, the morning light that dances on the walls, the smell of fresh jasmine, a stranger’s joy, the recognition of growth and self actualization.
So no, it’s not all horrible, and If I keep on going, they’ve said it’ll get better. They have said this and they have better meant it, cause fuck me are things pretty shit. Woe to those who call good evil and evil good. Was I evil because of the evil put onto me? Am I currently evil? Decisions made out of pain are not fully conscious, but they’re still made by you. The responsibility is on the person doing the evil. If I have committed an evil, like hurting a friend, it is my evil to bare burden to and mine alone. Is it other’s responsibility to understand my pastness? I try to understand everyone’s pastness in their reality, but its theirs, not mine, Ill never know, but you can try. This does not work, as it is my own. That’s both the peace and the struggle, we all have different realities, and we all see separately.
So, surely, with all this evil, comes good and maybe, hope. This begs the question, are we deserving of anything in this world, or, do we constantly have to fight for it? Work for it? Breathe for it? I don’t mean water, food and shelter, although, those things are privileges in the current state of this shit hole. If we are to speak on religious interpretation involving God, does God not give good after bad? With so much bad, there’s bound to be good. God teaches us of trial and tribulation, but also of forgiveness. Is forgiveness not symbolic of good? Lessons learned and pastness no longer condemned, no longer following wherever we go. I hope this is the case. If we are speaking about personal responsibility, it is my choice and effort to make my life better. Because, after so much bad, do I not want to have good? Do I even know what good looks like? It’ll take some time to recover after the bad, to be sure it will.
I don’t know what I did for these last few years, or, how I did them. I chose to asphyxiate the good and centre the bad, however, not all of this was exactly my choice. I am obviously not Mary, so I do not pretend to possess an immaculate heart. But it would be a lie to say, I didn’t think about having one. Maintaining purity within the madness of my past. Being gentled, kind and poised in all scenarios. This is most likely learnt with time spent on the planet. I haven’t always strategized my emotional reactions, therefore, dealing with life gracefully, was not a fully certain objective. Achieving a certain level of calm within stress is a new goal of mine in my 20s, it is for both parties involved. The manifestation of anxiety being thrust unto communication is least appealing to solution. I would like to solve.
Struggling with evil is universal among all of us. The question of what true evil is can be difficult to answer. We all have separate ideals and boundaries in place to identify ‘evil’ for protection. Evil is, perhaps, not as common, as we might like to believe. We are all extremely flawed as individuals. Some of us, are more flawed than others, some are unmalleable, some, too malleable. Impatience for thoughtlessness and accidental cruelty is, justified. I used to believe that every fuck up I made was intolerable and I was evil for this. I have gained clarity that I am not that big of a deal and know, in my being, I am good and will strive for kindness, even if it doesn’t meet other(s) standards. It’s a process of understanding that mistakes are normal and I am not Lucifer. I am no longer the victim and I will grow out of being the prosecutor. I am not the all-seeing eye. These ‘fuck ups’, beg the question, how many times are we allowed to fuck up, before we are actually bad? Are we bad or are you impatient with growth? Or, is the person fucking up, taking you for granted and making excuses for poor behavior? That is not for me to answer. I trust that patience is kindness unparalleled, and assertiveness will give you strength. To note, being called bad, so many times, does not make you bad. Having had evil thrust upon you, doesn’t mean your evil. It means you’ve made mistakes.
This discussion will be continued as I find myself becoming bored of cross examining external forces in my life. It becomes dull and repetitious. I am more or less, a supremely privileged woman, droning on about my past. <3