Of Monsters and Men #2

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche 

“Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

Sometimes, I'm not a good person. I want to be. I want to be good, to be liked. But, like many of the protagonists in my stories, I am often terribly unlikable. Wielding words sharpened by bitterness and disappointment, I lash out like a cornered animal. I am afraid of nothing and everything and this fear often presents as a tsunami of wrath, washing over anyone unfortunate enough to be close to me.

Therapists would couch these moments in terms I think were designed to lighten my guilt: it's my PTSD from being homeless and raped; or the Bipolar disorder and its rages that flash out of me, through no fault of my own; and possibly it's my PPD and psychosis that warp my thinking and hold my response system hostage, turning every encounter into a threat that produces an adrenaline-filled stress reaction. I explain these things to my clearly puzzled husband. My reactions aren't based in a reality that he would recognize, but they come from the only world I know. Understanding this does nothing to assuage my guilt, but at least I have definitions.

When I can name a thing, it loses some of its power. I want to believe this.

Defining evil, though? Not as simplistic as it seems it would be. While Christian tradition holds that there are seven sins so deadly as to be nearly unforgivable: pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth, and we could even add murder, cheating, lying, adultery, and narcissism to that list, we still fail to find consensus that these unsavory characteristics are wholly bad. Murder in self-defense is just that--self defense. Envy isn't so bad if we use that energy to model ourselves after people we admire. Adultery is perfectly fine for those in polyamorous marriages and lying is often a socially acceptable barrier against cruelty.

It's easy to call out evil when it is found in people who are removed from us by history and geography: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Hirohito, Genghis Khan, Vlad Dracula, Ivan the Terrible, etc. But even more frightening, more damaging? The ones closest to me. They hold a capacity for catastrophic damage, not least because hurting me requires first an utter betrayal of trust. And what then? What do I do when the monster is my brother, husband, father, or cousin? 

If you haven't had to call the police on your husband, or tell a teacher that your mother is the reason for the blooming purple bruises that dot your legs, or turned your child in to the authorities for committing a crime, this so-called moral dilemma remains fairly black-and-white for you: if someone does something bad, they deserve whatever punishment is coming for them. But what about when you find that it's the one you love who is the monster that always terrified you? You know their name. You've held their head in your lap and you know the softness of their skin against your lips. To borrow shamelessly from Star Wars, you've seen the good in them. When the monster is at your door, in all its human glory, a mere definition isn't sufficient.

And the worst part about loving the people who have left the deepest scars? I see myself in what they have done.

#52essays2017

But Why Do We Sleep? #1

I am six years old when a game of hide-and-seek with my cousins becomes the first thing I learn to fear. Closets and zippers aren’t to be trusted either. I am six years old when my mother reprimands me for behaving rudely to the boy who forced his penis into my small hands. He is my cousin, after all. I am six years old when I watch the big rig trucks barreling down Highway 95. The busy road lines right up with the edge of my grandparents’ property. It would be so easy to run in front of one of those, I think. 

I was six years old when I understood for the first time that grown-ups are shifty motherfuckers. Rules were imposed arbitrarily; lies were forbidden to children, though I caught my mother telling one at least once a week. Sundays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays were set aside for church and its related activities. I was not allowed to associate with anyone outside of our small rural congregation and when we were at church, our clothes were expected to be wrinkle-free and our smiles bright enough so others don’t notice that our stretched out grins don’t quite light up our eyes. If last night’s beating with the wooden paddle left bruises, I knew to wear a long-sleeved dress. Spare the rod, spoil the child--the paddle sometimes left an imprint of that Proverb in my fair skin. I was not a spoiled girl.

I had a gifted memory. I won prizes at AWANA and summer camp for memorizing more Bible verses than even the pastors’ kids. I cataloged my grievances: my mother never hugged me. My father never stopped the beatings she gave me. My parents kept inviting my cousins over. My mother sold my favorite house and moved us into a trailer in the country. It took me two hours to walk to school. As I trudged through the winter-hardened mud, I held the complaints inside me like a heartbeat. Ba-boom, I was so lonely. Ba-boom, I was tortured at school for wearing long skirts when every other girl was into leggings. Ba-boom, when a boy says he loves you, he really means he loves that you’ll give him blowjobs because no one told you that you didn’t always have to say yes when they asked for one.

Ba-boom, I took so many pills, but the hospital pumped them out of me.

I have one recurring dream during the seventeen years I live in my parents’ home:  I’m a passenger in a white, windowless van and we are crossing over one of the bridges in Portland. A grey car flies over the median and T-bones us; the driver can’t control the careening wheels and we smash through the guardrail. The van sails face down into the murky Willamette. The windshield cracks and I shrug as the water pours in. There are worse things—I could keep being alive, for instance. I always wake up right before I drown.

Portland. The place I lived in as a young adult and never quite appreciated. I ran off to be in this city with a boy after rehab. I ran off to rehab to get away from my parents and my husband. I ran off to blackout drunkenness and six-day coke binges to get away from my dead baby. I ran off to the husband to get away from the mother who called me a whore when I told her I was pregnant. I ran off to Aberdeen to get away from a town full of people who had just graduated high school with me. I ran back to my boyfriend when I couldn’t hide my rounding belly or keep my cereal down anymore. 

The five years I lived in Portland felt like a long slow pull out of REM sleep—all vague images, bizarre story-lines, characters that looked familiar but acted strangely, and me, but the hazy unconscious version. Without anything to dull my senses, being awake hurt like a sunburn. The weight of each pain I couldn’t forget pulled at my shoulders and my heart. 

I ran from a lot and after a while, I got tired.

#52essays2017