not the girl you thought you were - the traumas we cause

 One day I woke up and realised that I am a villain. I'd bought into the lie of being a "good person" and it made me lose track of my motivations. I felt shame, but I also felt very destabilised within my self-concept. And I felt bad for people I'd hurt. 

I had  been caught up in my own narrative of "helping people" of "doing good" - I lost track of allowing people to develop autonomy. I lost the ability to critique my own actions. I assumed I was a hero and I presented myself as if I was. 

That is the problem with the "hero" narrative of our culture. We aren't very trustworthy narrators, we assume that we are the heroes of our own stories. Because that's what our movies tell us. They centre the "hero" - almost always. And we are the centre of our lives. So it kind of makes sense that we assume we are heroes. That our actions are justified. That we are "good people." 

How often, when someone is accused of hurting someone or being shit, have you heard that person say "I'm a good person"- as if either: this is a defense or... because they are a good person, they can't possibly have hurt anyone, because good people don't hurt people. Yeah that's bullshit. Intention and effect are not the same thing. This is because:

1) You might not really be aware of what you intend to start with, often our real motivations are hidden from us, either because we are ashamed of them, or because they are completely subconscious

2) You don't get to decide if your actions were hurtful or not. This is a really hard one to conceive. It's basically about the fact that if someone tells you that something you did hurt them, you can't tell them that their lived experience is invalid because your version of reality is superior/more true. This is particularly evident in our society when a white person claims that something "wasn't racist" when they are called out by a person of colour. Which essentially suggests that the white person's "lived experience" is more valid/true than the person of colour's lived experience... which is of course... racist. Checkmate racism!

I know I've done shitty things. I've hurt people. I manipulated people. I did a lot of this without being clear about it, at the time I convinced myself that I was doing good things. I also think I've done some pretty great things. 

I'm not exempt from taking responsibility for my actions because of the cultural narrative of the "hero" and the "good person." I am responsible for those actions. As a society, we ALL need to realise that we are doing shitty things to each other, manipulating each other, taking advantage of our power in situations, making people feel powerless to get things we want, that we won't admit to. We need to realise that this isn't happening because there are "bad people" who do "bad things" to intentionally hurt people, or because those people over there are "sick fucks" - it happens because very few people are aware that they can think they are doing a "good thing" while they are doing something that is hurting people. 

This is the narrative we colonised the world with. We tried to "save the savage" we hurt and killed first nations people to "defend our families" or "defend our land" - we used these stories to make ourselves the hero, because it made us uncomfortable to reassess the story of ourselves being the hero.

If I hurt you, or didn't understand you. If I treated you poorly, manipulated you or did something super horrible or inappropriate to you. I'm super fucking sorry. It's not okay. And I will keep trying to deal with myself as the person who did those not very okay things. I hope that my shitty things that I didn't make you doubt yourself too heavily, or destroy your self concept. I hope that you brushed me off like some crumbs off your lap. And if you didn't, I hope this helps you realise that I did something shitty to you. and that I'm not expecting anything from you and you're welcome to hate me forever for it. You're welcome to set fire to an effigy of me. You're welcome to talk shit about me. You don't have to hold any secrets for me or protect me for my shitness  And I hope that in all of this, you turn into your heart and find the ways to forgive yourself for the hurt you caused others, for the ways you failed.

In our humanness, maybe we will finally see each other, flawed, fuelled by cultural narratives that we used to feel okay about ourselves. I love you and I'm sorry about any pains I caused you.