A Candle · 12:24am Mar 23rd, 2018
Violence is bad.
Sneering. Mocking. I wore the armband, they argued, and so I had to put up with them. I wore the armband, and so I deserved it. I bore it, for a time. I waited for them to stop.
They escalated. Kicks turned to openly-displayed fists, turned to bloody cuts, uncovered bruises. Salt from the cafeteria was brought and poured in open wounds. They thought it funny. I thought it hurt.
Once, I brought two rocks in from outside. They were heavy, smooth, and just fit under closed fists. They came. They didn't bother with words anymore. They wanted a rise. I, finally, gave it to them. The first went down under heavy blows. I didn't stop. I kept going, over and over and over, and I didn't stop. Not until a finger slipped and a rock fell, and one of the more jagged edges split skin. I saw red, and I fled.
Punishment was swift and useless. I thought to myself, as I waited in dark and empty rooms, if I was right. I agonized. And I returned.
I was left alone. Some even afforded nods of respect.
Dogmatic. Stuck in my thinking. Just like the people I'd sworn I'd never become. It was a different mode of thinking, but it followed the same tracks. I held a resolution to be peaceful. Nonviolent. Except, I didn't. As the blows rained down, as I bore greater and greater extremes, as those in power never batted an eye, I appeared peaceful. I appeared moral, and I was hated for it. I never deserved it, but in dark moments, I thought I did.
Any mental construction, any system of morals, is nothing without consistency. I allowed violence—against myself. I put myself above the system, made myself a special case. It's easy, so easy, to put yourself on a pedestal, whether it be a mile high or in a pit in the ground. I put up a show. But the solution, the easiest and ultimately the safest way to uphold my beliefs, was to break them. It's easy to say everything is a shade of gray. It's so much harder to realize it.
In the end, public opinion swayed in my direction. Many now saw my display as virtuous. And yet, if we had been fighting Hitler, I would have done the same.
Violence may be the last refuge of the incompetent, but no one is completely competent.
You have clearly never met me just after my third cup of coffee at four in the morning.
4822944
Care to share
4823014
A lot of stories I've written; they are written at the crack of dawn in a manic, sleep-deprived state.