I guess it stands to reason that I opened the floodgates last week, and stuff is pouring out.
The topic that is calling most urgently is one that I suspect most of my friends and readers may find surprising, although I don't think it is uncommon: All my life, I have felt that deep down, I must be "evil."
A stranger might immediately jump to the conclusion that religion was involved, and certainly, Christianity's concept of "original sin" has a lot to answer for. As an Episcopalian, I was exposed this notion, but not over-exposed, if you know what I mean. Yes, I joined in the Book of Common Prayer's "Prayer of Humble Access," where I said that I was "not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under Thy table." I literally believed the words of the hymn Herzliebster Jesu ("I crucified Thee") and I've written about how I confessed in fourth grade to sins I not only did not commit, but couldn't possibly have understood. But my church upbringing didn't seem to me to focus on sin, but more on beauty, the beauty of the service words and music (presumably as a window to the beauty of heaven?!) There were no "fire and brimstone" sermons, or extra weekday services. At home, except for a simple daily grace at the dinner table, my parents never mentioned religion or good vs. evil. The Bible was not read except for the Christmas story, on Christmas Eve. Adult parties (at which our church rector was a frequent guest) featured alcohol and cigarettes.
No, I think my sense of being evil came earlier, almost as a birthright. And the following is the only sense I can make of it.
What if people like my dad, with limited-to-no capacity to love others or to see outside themselves, literally consider "good" people "evil"? What if this duality is turned so totally on its head in them that they cannot tolerate the qualities that most people would agree are good -- kindness, generosity, truth, wisdom, beauty, respect for others, etc. I guess it might make sense for a "good" child born into this situation to get the impression that they were evil. Speaking only for myself, I think what happened was that, to counteract how bad I had the impression that I was, I worked hard to be abnormally "good." This wasn't to impress people, but out of a simple desire to overcome my badness and earn the possibility of being loved. Of course, the irony is that, the more good I tried to be, the more I felt myself being held at arm's length (nothing, of course, was ever said), intensifying and providing more momentum to the whole circular process. If I slipped even in the slightest, I felt not only mild embarrassment, regret or mortification, but genuine, pit-of-the-stomach "I don't belong here on this planet" kind of self-hatred, which has continued until very recently. A small accident, like breaking someone's drinking glass in their kitchen sink, brought on a level of terror and self-loathing utterly out of proportion to the actual event. This daughter of someone who was incapable of apologizing has been the queen of apologizing. And I've had a tendency to think I am responsible when anything anywhere near me goes wrong, just because I was in the vicinity. Really?
There may be no way for me to ever know for sure if this theory holds water, in my life or in general. No one close to me ever said anything, and it was the utter silence around everything that left room for so many self-negating assumptions, left me blaming myself for not being loved. Yes, there is a lot of "unpacking" of this that I need to do. But I am glad to say that, over the last few months, I have noticed that I am less terrified of myself. The sense that I might be inherently evil seems to be completely dissolving from my core. This rebirth is bringing with it a measure of self-acceptance. I may be many things, but evil? Of course not. It was a preposterous misconception, wherever it came from.
