In the eyes of the confessor you cannot tell a lie.
"...step you down to size.
Naked as the day that you were born... "
- Joe Walsh - The Confessor
I've been through a meat grinder of stress in the last three years. Let's just say brain surgery was involved - twice - and that was not the thing I worried most about.
yeah, me too.
I allowed people I had just met to drill a hole in my skull, or peel back the skin and manipulate man-made devices they put inside my brain, all so they could save my life.... my ... "quality of life" ...
So who gets to decide what that quality is? Who gets to decide if we want more of this?
I get a lot of people who think they are shaming me by saying that i have no right to take my life because it was not mine to take; like I was put here for someone else's purpose and I have no right to interfere with some ethereal plan, or question their decision. Well, if someone knocked you unconscious and you woke up on a deserted island with no clue how you got there -
....do you really think the worst thing you can do is question what is the purpose of your being put there? No, of course not - and the number of religions that have been invented and proliferated and promoted in the history of mankind is proof that although a lot of people are undoubtedly looking for answers everywhere they feel compelled, the simple reality of how many of them disagree with one another on the agreement of an answer is all the proof a logical mind would need to question the existence of any plan, or any conductor.
I did something I know I should not have done a few days ago. I caused someone pain. I could have caused a much larger catastrophe, but I was so angry, at that moment. And I justified my anger because from behind my own periscope on that moment, the person I lashed out at had simply dismissed me already and had not given any care about me. And so my reptilian brain reverted to it's basest instincts, percieved a slight from another, and determined that it was thoroughly appropriate to return the slight.
I returned a five pound slight with a 400 pound slight, and I made a mark.
At the moment it happened, the brakes were disconnected. All my angst of the last two years was balled up into one split-second reaction. Probably a lot more than two years was in that punch. It was a figurative punch, but it was a direct shot right at someone's head. A total stranger had slighted me, but in a way that many others over many years had done before; and so I took thirty years of indignation over a common act by people who behave with indifference to others, and I made myself impossible for anyone to be indifferent to, right then, in that moment.
I slammed on the brakes - to the floor - in the middle of an interstate highway - at 70 miles an hour.
Two wrongs. Nothing right.
Mark Maron did an absolutely brilliant stand-up comedy routine about how anger starts small, then gets passed from person to person, increasing in intensity with each slight, "until somehow it all winds up in the Middle East."
Profound.
Last Thursday I unloaded all the anger of the Middle East on a total stranger because she pissed me off, and I told her about it. Her reaction to that...lit a fuse with no delay and I just snapped.
I went from self-declared victim of a slight to a vindictive monster in a nanosecond. My nerve impulses didn't even have time to reach their destinations, I just SNAPPED. Because 500 times over the last 30 years I had found myself in the same situation - a bullshit situation - because the other person was sharing my planet and they showed absolutely no awareness that I was even on their planet. Oh yeah? Well goddamnit, you're not going to miss me this time.
And I feel ugly inside. I feel visceral and dark, like my spleen has ruptured and all the bile of my entire 51 years is now free-flowing through my whole body. I did something to someone who - in that instant JUST FUCKING DESERVED IT, and five seconds later, I was ashamed, because
godamn, man - did she really deserve THAT?
SO I don't know the answer. I actually committed a crime at that moment, because I left the scene of an accident; albeit I did not see any slumped bodies on the ground or blood in the air - it was a minor impact. But it was an impact. And yes, the law says that a person shall follow at such a distance as to be able to react in time to what happens in front of them, so typically this means the one who hits from behind is always at fault
But there are those times when the guy in front wanted to make goddamn sure the bitch wouldn't see it coming, because "who the fuck does she think she is?"
So I don't know how far my angst is from winding up in the Middle East, but the confessor knows that he took a bad situation and made a worse one out of it, and then I made it even worse than that -
and that's where I'm going to stop writing today.
Well, almost. I did stop somewhere, later, and called the proper authorities and confessed what I had done. I gave them my information, and was told they would call me if they needed to contact me.
The problem is that I know the monster inside of me has more teeth and bigger claws than he used to. Regardless of what conjured up that monster and what feeds him still, it's still my job to keep his leash taught enough to not allow him to eat people. And he took a bite out of someone last week.
Granted - she waved her arms and made it clear that she wanted to be seen and recognized so that I would know how SHE did not appreciate my stern look in her general direction. And I showed her that i did not appreciate her apoplectic gesticulation and silent mouthing of words that probably weren't from a Baptist hymnal by putting a 3,000 pound car right in front of her with as little warning as I could give. Her car hit mine;
Chicken, or egg?
In retrospect, it's all just a fucking omelette at this point - broken shell and overcooked, botulinum toxin from lack of proper handling, and indisputably bad for everyone who consumed it on that day.
Naked as the day that you were born... "
- Joe Walsh - The Confessor
I've been through a meat grinder of stress in the last three years. Let's just say brain surgery was involved - twice - and that was not the thing I worried most about.
yeah, me too.
I allowed people I had just met to drill a hole in my skull, or peel back the skin and manipulate man-made devices they put inside my brain, all so they could save my life.... my ... "quality of life" ...
So who gets to decide what that quality is? Who gets to decide if we want more of this?
I get a lot of people who think they are shaming me by saying that i have no right to take my life because it was not mine to take; like I was put here for someone else's purpose and I have no right to interfere with some ethereal plan, or question their decision. Well, if someone knocked you unconscious and you woke up on a deserted island with no clue how you got there -
....do you really think the worst thing you can do is question what is the purpose of your being put there? No, of course not - and the number of religions that have been invented and proliferated and promoted in the history of mankind is proof that although a lot of people are undoubtedly looking for answers everywhere they feel compelled, the simple reality of how many of them disagree with one another on the agreement of an answer is all the proof a logical mind would need to question the existence of any plan, or any conductor.
I did something I know I should not have done a few days ago. I caused someone pain. I could have caused a much larger catastrophe, but I was so angry, at that moment. And I justified my anger because from behind my own periscope on that moment, the person I lashed out at had simply dismissed me already and had not given any care about me. And so my reptilian brain reverted to it's basest instincts, percieved a slight from another, and determined that it was thoroughly appropriate to return the slight.
I returned a five pound slight with a 400 pound slight, and I made a mark.
At the moment it happened, the brakes were disconnected. All my angst of the last two years was balled up into one split-second reaction. Probably a lot more than two years was in that punch. It was a figurative punch, but it was a direct shot right at someone's head. A total stranger had slighted me, but in a way that many others over many years had done before; and so I took thirty years of indignation over a common act by people who behave with indifference to others, and I made myself impossible for anyone to be indifferent to, right then, in that moment.
I slammed on the brakes - to the floor - in the middle of an interstate highway - at 70 miles an hour.
Two wrongs. Nothing right.
Mark Maron did an absolutely brilliant stand-up comedy routine about how anger starts small, then gets passed from person to person, increasing in intensity with each slight, "until somehow it all winds up in the Middle East."
Profound.
Last Thursday I unloaded all the anger of the Middle East on a total stranger because she pissed me off, and I told her about it. Her reaction to that...lit a fuse with no delay and I just snapped.
I went from self-declared victim of a slight to a vindictive monster in a nanosecond. My nerve impulses didn't even have time to reach their destinations, I just SNAPPED. Because 500 times over the last 30 years I had found myself in the same situation - a bullshit situation - because the other person was sharing my planet and they showed absolutely no awareness that I was even on their planet. Oh yeah? Well goddamnit, you're not going to miss me this time.
And I feel ugly inside. I feel visceral and dark, like my spleen has ruptured and all the bile of my entire 51 years is now free-flowing through my whole body. I did something to someone who - in that instant JUST FUCKING DESERVED IT, and five seconds later, I was ashamed, because
godamn, man - did she really deserve THAT?
SO I don't know the answer. I actually committed a crime at that moment, because I left the scene of an accident; albeit I did not see any slumped bodies on the ground or blood in the air - it was a minor impact. But it was an impact. And yes, the law says that a person shall follow at such a distance as to be able to react in time to what happens in front of them, so typically this means the one who hits from behind is always at fault
But there are those times when the guy in front wanted to make goddamn sure the bitch wouldn't see it coming, because "who the fuck does she think she is?"
So I don't know how far my angst is from winding up in the Middle East, but the confessor knows that he took a bad situation and made a worse one out of it, and then I made it even worse than that -
and that's where I'm going to stop writing today.
Well, almost. I did stop somewhere, later, and called the proper authorities and confessed what I had done. I gave them my information, and was told they would call me if they needed to contact me.
The problem is that I know the monster inside of me has more teeth and bigger claws than he used to. Regardless of what conjured up that monster and what feeds him still, it's still my job to keep his leash taught enough to not allow him to eat people. And he took a bite out of someone last week.
Granted - she waved her arms and made it clear that she wanted to be seen and recognized so that I would know how SHE did not appreciate my stern look in her general direction. And I showed her that i did not appreciate her apoplectic gesticulation and silent mouthing of words that probably weren't from a Baptist hymnal by putting a 3,000 pound car right in front of her with as little warning as I could give. Her car hit mine;
Chicken, or egg?
In retrospect, it's all just a fucking omelette at this point - broken shell and overcooked, botulinum toxin from lack of proper handling, and indisputably bad for everyone who consumed it on that day.
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