Confessions and Graveyards

 I’m a little glad that some people are no longer a part of my life. What I’ve come to notice is that even after they leave, they tend to quietly monitor my life from behind the screens. It doesn’t offend me, of course. But I think it’s an interesting observation. People don’t reply to each other’s texts right away anymore. It’s understandable since it all depends on priorities and people’s priorities change throughout the course of life. My theory is, your texts are seen the moment you hit send, but when and if you’re replied to are casually decided by how important you are to the receiver - even if it’s a friend. They may continue to be visibly active online or even leave you on read, but that’s how it is now. I don’t intend to come across as offended because such things don’t affect me. I simply write what I observe and I observe… quite a lot. I wouldn’t know the trends in calls these days because I’d rather jump in a river than pick up a phone call. A typical introvert trait, you see. 

Some people can be sensitive to such behaviour and not being replied to can somewhat easily trigger them. That’s okay because there’s nothing wrong about giving a shit. Also, it’s harder to remain stagnant with respect to the world / generation’s evolution, than to evolve with times and keep up with the virtual reality on screens we call life now. With the blossoming public awareness around formerly taboo topics like mental health, gender inequality, sex education and LGBTQIA+, we might not be entirely progressing towards a cyberspace-oriented criminal world ruled by robots and aliens. But sticking to the present and the not-so-distant future, we’ll probably still continue to categorise people and the world in general for our personal convenience. That should be alright as long as we don’t impose ourselves on them or shun the ones that do not fit into a box we made for ourselves. 

Speaking of putting people into boxes, there’s something else that dawned on me some months ago. I no longer believe that people can be deemed as absolutely good or bad. As a kid, the main thing I always tried to be was a good person and I don’t think I did a very bad job at it either. I believe that’s where the roots of my people pleasing complex lied. That’s not the point I want to make right now though. My point is, I cannot digest the belief that people are either good or bad. I think humans are far too complex to be able to be defined by such stereotypes. We will always be the bad guy in someone’s story just as much as the good guy in others’. I think we all do things that are good, bad, something in between or something utterly meaningless. People decide what they want to consider when they judge if we’re good or bad, in their opinion. Am I wrong to conclude that? 

Let me use myself as an example here. As far as I know, most people who know me consider me as a good person. What if I was asked what the worst thing I ever did was? Plucked a flower? Stole a pencil? I guess most of these people who know me would refuse to believe that I’ve ever done something bad to someone who didn’t deserve it. It’s a social expectation that someone like me can only embody innocence, purity and humanity. It’s true that I have never written about this before. But today, I simply felt like writing about it. I believe that the worst thing I ever did in my life so far was bullying one of my classmates in around 5th grade. 

Yes, I used to be a bully in middle school and only towards one classmate who used to be collectively bullied by our entire class. The fact that I was not the only one who bullied this kid is not at all an excuse for what I did. I mentioned that as a kid, the main thing I always tried to be was a good person. So then… what happened, right? To be honest, I never realised that what I was actively participating in was called “bullying”. Back then, I thought that that was called “having fun”. What I really did was that I made fun of this kid online and posted messages and comments about him on my old Facebook account. Now that I think of it, I never really hated this classmate. I simply did it because it was fun to fit in with the rest of my classmates and laughing with them. No one wanted to be the one being laughed at, after all. But I think I took things too far when I posted a poem about this kid online which was mainly filled with childish insults and derogatory comments. It was liked and praised by a bunch of my other classmates too. I don’t remember if I did anything else but as far as I do recall, that’s what I did. 

I bullied them on Facebook while the rest of the class bullied them in class. Back then, I never thought about how it would affect them and as time passed, I even forgot everything about it. It became extremely normalised to treat this classmate in that way. No doubt, we traumatised them for the rest of their life. Many years later, somehow, it came up in a random conversation with a friend. This friend was told about what I did by the victim themself. It immediately struck a chord somewhere and the memories once buried deep down came flooding back into my brain. I was filled with self-loathe, shame and guilt, not because my friend found out but because that’s when I realised the impact and consequences of what I did. It had been many years since it all happened but to the victim, I was still one of their bullies and I deserved it. Maybe that’s where karma decided to even things out on my end, years later. 

I wanted to reach out to the victim and apologise but I was too ashamed of what I did to them and did not feel worthy of forgiveness. My friend (who found out) consoled me, saying that it was all just for fun, and that I shouldn’t make such a big deal out of it after so many years. Eventually I gave in to that but I knew it was a terrible thing that I did and I’ll probably remember it for the rest of my life too. As for the epilogue, I heard that the victim grew up to be a bully themself. It explains a lot and I still feel guilty and deeply ashamed of everything I said and wrote about and did to this ex-classmate. 

So, having said all that, what do you think of me now? Am I not a good person in your opinion  anymore but someone evil? Or do you still think that I am a good person and those were mistakes I made in the past unknowingly? Whatever your judgement may be, my point stands. So, my request to you is to think before you immediately judge someone and put them in a box and also, to reflect on your own actions and words and what you have contributed to people’s lives. I’m not saying, prioritise everyone’s happiness and always be the good guy. Because what they don’t teach us is that these are just some of the impossible high standards of our society. Truth is, we will fuck up sometimes, we will hurt people sometimes regardless of our true intentions. But if we are to ever choose between doing the good thing and the right thing, it’s better to choose the right thing. What we think to be the right thing is subjective but here’s another thing I believe in : There are more good people in this world than bad. I know I don’t believe in absolute goodness or badness when it comes to people. But that is really the best way I could put it for those of you reading this. If you can’t find a good person, be one.

Here’s a little task for you. If you think you’re a good person, ask yourself what you think is the worst thing you ever did. If you think you’re a bad person, ask yourself what you think is the best thing you ever did. Write your answers to me. I’d eagerly read them all. Until next time!