I'm somewhat good.
I truly believe I'm seated in the middle of being a somewhat good and bad person - I guess that's just being human.
I wanted my father to be a good man. I wanted him to be a good man because maybe that would make me a good person in a roundabout way. I tend to tell white lies. After all, I feel my life is so incredibly morbid and bland that if I can, I will bend the truth because I have this soul crushing fear that I am a horrible person because of who I am directly related to so if I can say that over the weekend I wrote, I read, I went hiking when really I sat and stared at the roof till my bones felt heavy then I will.
I know it’s bad. I know it’s a sin, and my nanna will tell me to say five Hail Marys to save my soul, but the way I watch people around me with a dull envy will never truly leave. I don’t think I have ever looked at someone and not felt a pull of resentment.
I am sure that makes me a bad person.
I would never say or do anything to harm people around me, but I dance around the truth of myself, so that would have to mean something, right? I let people go ahead of me in traffic. I let others walk over me. I break my bones to make sure I participate in the ever-changing social lives of others, so that means I have to be a good person.
What if I’m not?
Is my soul damned? I hold the rosary in my hands to only feel guilt. Will the angels look down on me and turn their faces away?
I have spent my life punishing myself for who I am - must I continue to do so? I have tried in recent years to avoid punishing myself, and I can say I only tell white lies to my partner when he asks me about my day, and to avoid a pitiful look from him, I will tell him I had a great day. I have slowly started being able to look at others and feel nothing - only just. I have been trying to ruminate less. Though all the bad choices I’ve made, the things I have said, the stuff I didn’t do sit under me and crawl up till my neck cracks in an attempt to rid myself of them, but they stay.
I wish I had never told those lies when I was younger, I wish I hadn’t harboured a deep fear, I wish I had fought back at my bullies, I wish I had helped them, but I can’t. I can only try to change, watch the memories through clouded windows and try to avoid that path.
I would like to think I have become different in my later years, but it has been a month since my father hasn’t contacted me, and I have imagined him dying. I would do nothing. A man who abuses a child should not get sympathy. I think I would lay wolfsbane on his grave. I think I would always wish I had never been born from rotted blood.
Maybe I’m not good, but at least I’m not truly bad. I think I’m just human. I think I’m just trying to figure this out, and we are all assholes who think we are horrible. I think I will always stay seated on top of these memories and worries, and to keep myself good, I will just have to learn from the past and remind myself that I’m human and that I am somewhat good.