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