Becoming Her, The Unknown

The role of the victim is the best one to play, and the easiest to remember. Somehow you become so good, repeating the same words, and crying at the same lines becomes so natural that reality is suddenly clouded. Out of nowhere, a different story appears and you are are too weak to object, all you can do is apologise. And then you realise you were never the lamb, what you didn't know was that you had always been the wolf.

Maybe this is the karma I am paying now, I had created a reality where I had been non-existent and a woman who was a victim, but I never listened to other people's lives.  And it would seem I was far from non-existent (I had this hope I was the crazy one) but no, it would seem I was little Miss Popular of the most fucked up of clicks. I was, apparently, a leader. And what I did with that leadership was segregate people... Of course I would blocked that, who wouldn't? I cannot blame my behaviour on anything, I was a bitch, and my subsequent forgetting just makes me an even worse one.

So I suppose I am an asshole, and I have always been.  How do you say sorry for the transgressions done 20 years ago? Pain, wounds and scars. I know too well how a person's identity is shaped by the harm caused by another. I just never thought I was that "another"... But as we walk through life it is inevitable that we touch people, sometimes that touching is more like punching, and it would seem I have done a fair amount of it. And sorry is not enough, nothing I say or do will make up for it, and that will have to be the burden I carry. And so I should remember, memory is a fickle thing, clearly.

Penance is such a catholic concept, but yet one that fits this purpose more than karma does somehow. Penance you pay in life. there is no second chance. And so I feel right now it all fits. I had created this self that was free of guilt, I had forgotten all that I had done and created an identity that was neither empty of guilt nor full of it, but yet I released myself of it. I found a way of surviving with that self that was me and escaped me at every turn.

I shrugged  at every mention of that woman. I still do. I am delicate, petite, and yet, I am neither. If I could I would rule, but ruling led me to despotism.. Maybe both penance and karma are playing their part here. Maybe I am yet to play my part in this play, I have happily danced in every shade of the spectrum, with the shadow always one step ahead, believe me I have chased it never quite catching it. And maybe that is it, I am so tempted by the shadows, by my own lengthening shadow, that this sense of self  is no longer whole, but has it ever been?

I still look at the scars in my left arm to remind me that not all wars are fought between men. Many wars are fought in the mind. My body is the battlefield. This is my penance  Eventually I will only be a set of letters on a screen. Words on a page. And I will be gone. My legacy will either be the pain I left behind or whatever pitiful cause I fought for. But my words, my beautiful words, I hope, they remain. I hope the scratches on a page, or the words on a screen will survive. If only that of me remains, I don't deserve much, but I hope.