“Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.”

Arthur Shopenhauer

I am not the bad guy. I am not the bad guy. I just have bad thoughts. I can’t control that, right? That doesn’t make me a terrible person? I am selfish and arrogant and conceited and angry and self-sabotaging, but only in my head. I hold it all in my head because if I let it out that would make me bad, right? If I just keep it all to myself and quiet my cries and hurt only when no one is around to witness then I can still be worthy of love, right? Someone will still want me? All I have to do is be silent. If I can hold everything within myself, if I can avoid certain topics lest a sentence escapes that I would desperately try to return to safety with no avail, then I will still be a good person. I have to be. I’m not in control of my emotions, but I can pretend that I am. I can pretend that the sickness in my stomach is not ever-present, that the bile in my throat doesn’t choke me daily. Purse your lips so that nothing can get through. Close your eyes so that you won’t watch anyone’s face for too long, hoping that they can see what is true within you and want you around regardless. I have an evil seed pit festering in my organs, wrapping itself seductively around my intestines and popping my alveoli with pointed fangs and strangling the life out of my liver with its sinewy being. Did I swallow the seed? Did she grow from who I already was? Please, dear God, tell me that she is not intrinsically me. If I swallowed her, maybe she will die in the unfamiliar temperatures underneath my skin. Maybe the habitat will become unsustainable, because she is placing hatred where hatred does not belong, and she will shrivel up and wither away and I can move again. But if she grew from me, if I harvested her from my own womb and implanted her within my bloodstream, there is nothing I can do to stop her. I fear endlessly that I am her mother, and she my child. If the sinister within me is truly one with my body, what hope do I have for survival? Perhaps I will survive, but it will be in twisted retribution, a woman scorned by her own fingertips, and that is a life worse than death.