Selective Sins

how your wrongs are deemed less wrong than mine

If you are one of the many woowoo people in my life, you can already feel my eyes roll out of my eye sockets and onto the floor at the idea that everything happens for a reason. The stars and the moon and the waves of the ocean have already chosen my path for me as a world class fuck up. I am a predetermined amalgamation of my ancestors’ choices and the moment my parents decided to procreate. I wish I had it in me to use this kind of cosmic determinism to excuse my bad behaviors. My grandfather was an astrologer, so a part of me does, admittedly, believe in fate and destiny. How fractals of ourselves formed before our bodies slid out, slimy and slippery, screaming, covered in gunk, into a doctor’s rubber-gloved hands.

But that does not remove agency. It does not erase choice or nuance. In true abolitionist form, I am trying my best to counteract and forgive my beliefs of the past, especially my judgments. How quickly we have all been to point a finger at somebody acting out during rock bottom, deeming them crazy, clutching our Telfars while saying “well I would never!”

But how could you know? How could you honestly know how you would react in moments of desperation, on the border between psychosis and insecurity? What fear pushes us to do and forces us to forget under a mixture of substances and adrenaline? And how dare we let those images of mistakes keep a person frozen forever in our minds. I think that when I have done this, it is because I have not believed in my own capacity to change. I like being stuck. Stuck is cozy. I know what to expect, and the loop of disappointment acts as a heated blanket, warming my insides with the satisfaction of knowing what will happen. The frozen image of a person allowed me to frame morality as whatever that person was not.

Recently, I reconnected with a friend I had not spoken to in years. During our fallout, I focused on behaviors rather than reasoning because the behaviors affected me directly and more immediately. I think reasoning requires more nuance. I think zooming out requires a degradation of ego. I think ego can be upheld by groups of people who validate the frozen image we keep.

I have always oscillated between wanting to be part of a group and wanting to break free from any singular social circle. It is a push and pull where, no matter where I have settled temporarily, I have felt a deep loneliness in the pit of my stomach. Lately, I have not felt so lonely. I am learning to understand the difference between community and a group of friends. Sometimes, those ideas overlap but they don’t always have to. Thanks to my sertraline and weed addiction, I can accept my flow of things. I can be buoyant and social one day, then spend the next two moving from place to place in silence.

This process of reflection has led me to reconsider the people from my past I had so quickly villainized. That villainization was so immediately supported by a group and rather than any of us moving individually to maintain our relationships, we abandoned then in tandem. Realizing that has forced me to take a step back and look at people I have frozen’s “bad behaviors” with more complexity, rather than flattening them completely as if I am the only person who can hold multiplicity. I wonder why I, and so many other people, believe some sins are more acceptable than others.

I do not mean on a larger scale of demonic shit. I mean the simple sins of existing under the capitalist oppressive regime that forces us to label Good versus Bad. Sins that hold more complexity, like getting too mentally warped by a workplace or getting too drunk. How can I demonize a person for their sins and deem my sins not as bad? It feels like I had been playing God in those moments, striking down my spear upon those who had made the wrong turn during a mental haze.

And I am anything but God. As I mentioned before, I am a world class fuck up. I repeat my mistakes at nauseam. I have done things for reasons that quite literally helped lead me to my diagnosis of CPTSD so while that itself has been painted as an excuse, I suppose I paint that as… everything happens for a reason!