My friend Trinity and I are doing weekly writing prompts that we’ve created for ourselves. I plan to post mine here. The title of each post will be the week followed by the prompt. They can be fiction or nonfiction or whatever. This one is nonfiction. It’s my first one.
I spend most of my life trying to be a kind and considerate person. To me, one of the most important things about being a human is attempting to overcome the natural self-centeredness we’re all born with to imagine others complexly and widen my capacity for compassion. We can only ever see things through our own eyes. We can only experience things from our own perspectives. As someone who thinks that empathy is one of the greatest abilities we humans have, being thoughtful and considering others is something I always strive to do. If someone cuts me off in traffic, I try to think of all the reasons they might have felt the need to do that (maybe it’s an emergency, maybe it was an accident, maybe they’re a new driver who’s just getting used to the road). If a customer is difficult and rude, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt - maybe they’re suffering a lot in their life at the moment…maybe they’re usually much kinder and more appreciative, and I’ve caught them on a bad day. You can never know exactly what’s going on in another person’s head; you never really know their motivations and reasoning for the way that they are. And I try to keep that in mind when I’m dealing with people who leave me feeling less than inclined to be polite or kind.
However.
There’s one major thing that gets in the way of me living this kind and thoughtful life all the time. Wherever I go, whatever I do, no matter the time or the place, I live with a monster by my side. This monster spends all of its time twisting about my ankles, waiting for the right moment to slither up to my shoulders.
And then it whispers in my ear. Delicious, dreadful things.
Sometimes the monster is easy to ignore. Erik leaves his shoes out in the living room where he kicked them off after work. I hear the monster purr as it slithers up to whisper about how inconsiderate my husband is, how hypocritical. Doesn’t he always stress keeping the house clean and tidy? Doesn’t he always fuss about picking up after other people? Why should I have to pick up after him? He should know better than to leave these things lying around. What a terrible, selfish man.
It’s ridiculous, right? It’s just a pair of shoes. I shush the monster, shoo it away, and I pick up the shoes. No doubt I’ve left things like this out before that Erik’s had to pick up. It’d be such a stupid and petty thing to fight over. Sometimes, the monster is easy to silence.
But sometimes it’s much harder. Sometimes I give in. Sometimes when the monster whispers, I listen.
When I’m talking to Erik and Tyler and the conversation turns in such a direction that I can’t participate, and Tyler cuts me off for trying to break in and change the subject. When the boys leave their things scattered about the living room and kitchen after I’ve spent the entire day cleaning. When family members treat me like an inexperienced 16-year-old with no opinions of worth. When Erik is angry at me and I feel like I don’t deserve it. When I feel angry and wronged but no one will apologize for what they’ve done. When professors or customers or random people in the world say and do things that upset me and hurt me and make me question all the goodness I believe exists in the world. Then I fall to the power of the monster. It stokes my feelings of anger, darkness, bitterness, injustice, all to make me finally
snap.
You deserve better than that, it tells me. They shouldn’t treat you like that. How dare they think this is okay? You should teach them a lesson. You should show them that they can’t walk all over you like that. Tell them what you really think. Show them who you really are. You shouldn’t keep your feelings locked up. Let it out! Let your feelings roar!
And when the yelling starts, and the sarcastic comments start rolling off my tongue, I find it difficult to stop. I can feel my anger and frustration feeding the monster. I can see and feel it growing larger and larger, much more difficult to contain and control. Logic and reasoning escape me, tumbling away from me as quickly and easily as my angry words. I feel myself becoming a person I don’t want to be, and I see it in the eyes of those in front of me, those on the other end of my meanness and anger, and it’s usually the people I care most about that see this worst side of me. It’s the moments when the monster takes over that I feel most unlike myself, when I’m most ashamed, when I feel less and less like a real human being and more like a monster myself.
And the monster lives for this. It finishes its feast and leaves me to my troubles before I’m even finished wrecking everything. As the monster leaves, reason and empathy return, bringing with them feelings of shame and regret as I quickly realize my mistakes. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t think about it that way. No one told me that. I didn’t realize. I could have been nicer about it. I shouldn’t have doubted you. I should have known better. That was very rude of me. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’ll try to be better. It won’t happen again. Please forgive me.
You’d think the monster would be sated by now, but it almost always returns for dessert. This time, it doesn’t need my anger, so quickly wilted away. It doesn’t need my feelings of injustice or darkness. The monster feeds on my guilt, worry, sorrow, regret. And it’s very good at what it does.
You shouldn’t have treated them that way. They love you; they care about you. How could you be so mean? How could you say those things? How very selfish of you to act the way you did. Such a child. Do you think things will be okay now? Don’t you see that you deserve to be treated this way? You brought this upon yourself. It’s all your fault. You’ve gotten yourself into this mess. Do you really believe they’ll still love you? Do you really think they’ll forgive you? Foolish girl.
I cower under the monster’s renewed attacks, this time directed toward me. I nod, agreeing with its twisted logic. Of course it’s my fault. Of course I was wrong. I’m always wrong. The monster feeds my guilt, telling me what a terrible person I am, and I can’t help but listen. I am what’s wrong with the world. The monster is constant; the monster is strong. The monster is all I have left.
But miraculously, I feel the monster losing strength. Someone apologizes. Someone shows how much they care about me. Someone admits they were wrong. Someone tries to cheer me up. Those I love see the monster inside of me and still I find them standing by my side. And in the face of such support, such loyalty, such goodness, such love…the monster doesn’t stand a chance. I see the good in the world again, and I see the good in myself, all through the lens of the people I love and care about. They help me conquer the monster and keep it at bay. They help me find and become my true self, one that is kind and thoughtful and considerate. They help me feel empathy for those around me, and I hope I do the same for them.
The monster still lives inside me, and I still can’t win every battle. But as long as I can keep fighting, as long as I’m aware of the monster and try to keep it from winning me over, as long as I’m trying my best to be the good person that I know I can be, I think that’s enough.
The monster says otherwise, but I don’t even bother listening.
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