I watched a man walking down the street the other night, he stopped mid-step and screamed at the heavens before turning and knocking over a newspaper stand. I felt for him. I saw the struggle he was feeling and it reminded me of myself, when I was younger. I always felt like there were two parts of me warring for control, and for awhile, I thought it would be easier to think of them as two separate identities. The good person and the bad.
So, I gave in to my devious desires. I drank and did drugs, I took what I wanted, I dropped out of school, and I got into fights. I lived my life the way I wanted, consequences be damned. I’m not going to lie, it was fun. Except, there was always that little voice that I kept smothered inside. When I hurt someone, she hurt. When I stole something, she felt guilty. But that was okay because I didn’t think of her as a part of me and if I pushed her down hard enough, she might eventually go away, right?
She didn’t.
Actually, I couldn’t ignore her for too long so I figured I chose wrong and that maybe I was more good natured than bad. So naturally, I tried to turn it around by denying I ever had a selfish or malicious impulse…
That was even worse.
I tried so hard to be a “good” person, to be nice to everyone. Let me tell you, pretending to be nice to people you wished were sterile, talk about exhausting! But, I did it anyway. I ignored the cries of my inner bitch when someone cut me off or when I didn’t feel like helping someone and I kept going in the direction that was expected of me.
I felt like I was suffocating.
I remember my girlfriend sitting me down one day and telling me she was afraid of my anger. I was so confused and appalled, she didn’t know the person I kept locked inside and I was nothing but nice, all the time. Apparently, that was the problem. She knew, she saw the war that I was waging with myself and it was becoming obvious that I was losing. She was afraid that one day, the person I kept locked inside would break loose all over someone’s face.
***
It took a long time and I still have much to learn, but I’m finally happy with who I am. Isn’t that the point? I mean, how much better would the world be if everyone was forced to look at themselves, to make peace with themselves?
What have I discovered so far?
I am both good and bad and I have the capacity to do both wonderful and terrible things. And yeah, I worry that most people don’t war with themselves over wanting to do the wrong thing and trying to do the right thing, but I no longer feel guilty for who I am and I will keep trying to be the best me I can be.
Image credit: Ria Sopala from Pixabay
A Girl Named Fred 