Through the Window of the Past: Light & Dark

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...a continuation of prior hand-written journals I wrote before I began my writing career:

Later that Day: The Dark and the Light 28 October 2013
 
I thought I was done with what was swirling in my mind for the day, but I forgot the number one rule of journaling...you're not done until you're DONE and sometimes that means a pregnant pause before another thought grabs hold of you and won't let go. As I processed my thoughts about Aunt Mattie for the day, Grandma kept cropping up.
 
 Aunt Mattie was the oldest of nine children. My grandmother was the middle child, but the personality gap in between the kind of people they were was light years apart. For all of Aunt Mattie's light, love, patience, kindness and understanding, grandma countered with darkness, bitter hate, venom, and a general disconnectedness with humanity.  I remember as an adult being in one of my Sociology classes and upon hearing the traits and characteristics of a sociopath thinking how many of them suited my grandmother (i.e. superficial charm and good intelligence, unreliability, untruthfulness and insecurity, lack of remorse and shame, pathologic egocentricity and an incapacity for love). She was, in fact, part of the reason why I nearly got a degree in Sociology, as I just couldn't get enough of unraveling behaviors I'd often been the target of, all the while thinking it was because something was wrong with me, when in truth I wasn't the one with the issues at all. I once asked Aunt Mattie what made her so hateful and Mattie said, "Honey, she was born that way." From that point until many years later, I had an irrational fear that the black taint, that poison of her genetics was somehow passed on to me and would show up at some unknown future point. Frequently when I became hurt or angry, I could hear words she would have screamed forming in my mind, telling me to fight back her way. I would not, however, allow emotions to turn me into some vile creature and couldn't have found it in myself to justify causing harm to another in an attempt to salve my own anger. That end never justified the means, even to my small child mind. Still, the words WERE there. For my own self-preservation, I learned at an early age how to spot weaknesses in myself and others in case I might need to use them in the future to save myself. It is a horrifying skill set to have.
 
 I was so repulsed by the things that would come out of the mouths of adults around me (not just from my grandmother), that I developed this "do the loving thing in all things" mindset and applied it to almost everything as a counterbalance to a sludge that seemed to coat everything around me until I felt suffocated. The truth is, though, no matter what you tell yourself, sooner or later you're going to be angry at those who cause you harm... seriously, irrationally, your head's about to explode angry. In those moments, there is a war inside of me. I want to do the loving thing, but I also want to do the damaging thing to save myself from the pain someone has caused me. I want to hurt them more than the pain I'm feeling in a lashing out kind of reflex. I suppose to some degree that is true of everyone, but I have had to learn rigid, tight control of myself at those times because deep down somewhere, grandma's programming is there and it knows how to cause utter destruction. I am fortunate to have realized sooner than most, perhaps, that in doing that, lashing out in that way, we cause much more harm to ourselves. Hateful actions are poison, toxins difficult to cleanse once they've been released. That price is too much to pay, as if you allow it to, it will eat away your soul. It certainly ate hers. When she died, to my mind she was a shell devoid of even the smallest hint of joy, and I could not think of a single, truthful or kind word she'd ever said to anyone.
 
 The dark and the light live inside of me, inside us all. To deny one is to deny the other and leave "nothingness" in its wake. The test...the trick...the challenge is, which will we allow to influence our choices. Which will we allow to hold the control over who we are? I came to this realization for myself long before J.K. Rowling layered that theme through out her beloved books. Perhaps that pervasive theme in Harry Potter's life is big part of what endeared them to me for the rest of my life.