I didn't see the tree.
I gripped the umbrella handle and did a swoosh here, a pull there and freed it from the menacing tree. The things (and humans) that are meant to protect you have the potential to harm when they — and you — don't have enough light as you both move forward.
*
Lately, I've been wrestling with the realization that not only am I a made thing. I am a poor draft of what I hope to become.
I suppose my one redeeming quality is that I have ambitions of being better than I am.
A few weeks ago, I had lunch with a close friend who eyed me sideways and said words along the lines of, You know, most people think you're this shattered person who is morally confused and entirely not well adjusted.
I know, I said.
But that's not who you are.
Sure, I said.
So why do you think people have that perception?
I let them think I'm damaged, I said. Plus, I have neither the time nor the energy nor the desire to convince people otherwise.
Flaunting my best qualities isn't my modus operandi. I live to expose myself of my humanity, and in doing so, attempt to strip anybody within hearing distance of his pedestal until we're all barefoot on the same playing field.
I live to hear humans admit, we are all the same. Not one of us better, not one of us worse. There's a rapist inside all of us. A harsh belief, but one I've held firmly since I was a little girl.
I'm not self-loathing. I'm not insecure. I'm mostly an optimist. An equality-for-all social liberal. I'm well aware of my talents. I have plenty of friends. As cut up as they were, my parents still told me I was smart, pretty and that they loved me. Every day of my life. I also didn't grow up with the version of church that breeds unhealthy guilt.
My many "I'm a fuck up" admissions — the ones that have successfully led you and the rest of my stalkers and most of my good friends to believe that I really am a fuck up — stem from something I learned when I was ten years old.
You see, as soon as I picked up enough English, I wrote my first (well, only) award-winning story when I was seven. I wrote a series of short "books" for my sister when I was nine. And then when the darker universe caught on and realized what I would become — (a master world changer who cures impossible ailments of the heart with simple sentences) — it taught me to use my powers for evil.
So when I was ten (not surprisingly, the first time my dad ever went to jail), I learned how to poison people with words. I learned how to intuit a person's deepest insecurities and then spill evil sentences into those wounded places. I was a hurt child. I was a hurt child too proud to play the victim, so I learned to cope by hurting others.
I soon learned to feel remorseful. Eventually, I learned that hurting people came with boomerang-like consequences that would, plainly, make me feel like shit, too.
As a young adult, I learned to write on and on about what an awful person I am — not as confession, not as penance, but as a desperate attempt to locate empathetic others and prove to myself that I'm not the only human who is so ... human.
What frightens me now is that my "evil power" became so natural, sometimes it still turns on without my noticing. I'm twenty-six years old. A writer, even. And I still use my words to lash out at people.
My friends say I'm a good person. Several people — even ones who've felt the brunt of my lashing out — have chosen to continue to love me.
Stop with that talk. You're not a rapist, they'd say.
Sure I am, I'd say. Or I could be. Didn't Jesus die for everyone? He didn't slice off an arm for one person and stab himself in the chest for another.
Your greatest strength can be your greatest weakness. Where is that from? Is it biblical? And does this mean that my greatest weaknesses can be my greatest strengths?
You're a lot closer to where you want to be, said my friend during that lunch. Your a lot closer to that person you want to be than you think you are.
That was nice to hear.
Even though that's not true of me every day.
