People have disagreements all the time. Even the kind-hearted ones meet people who get to their nerves and never quite crawl out of their skin. I’ve been listening to stories of less-than-serious bouts and general bitchiness. They go on and on. They never stop. Some cracks will mend almost as soon as other bonds break. The problem is, everyone’s messed up if it’s not yourself. But you sidestep the issues because it’s more fun to fraternize and then do some backstabbing while your at it. Sometimes I wish people will just face each other, say f- off! once and for all, and be done with it. The problem is, I can’t do that myself. No, I’m not talking in the specific.

I’m talking about misbehaving. How the mere idea of it can have a potent excitability at times. I’ve listened to normally gentle people wish another bodily harm, not really meaning the words but exulting in the power having uttered them affords. I’m not the Mary Sue of this story. God knows I’ve cursed one too many times in my head to ever be worthy of the “good girl” label. I know people who draw a very defined line between black and white; I’ve lived with them all my life. These are the very people who will recoil in horror if I tell them that every night I go home, I look at the packs of cigarettes being sold in the streets and contemplate about buying them. It will not even matter that I stop myself, every. single. time. I believe that there are genuinely saintly people around. I’ve met some of them and I hold them in the highest regard, if I can’t be the same.

It’s one thing to try to be virtuous and quite another to be faultless. As the old adage says, “to err is human.” But compassion and respect are ingrained facets of our humanity as well. So I say hate if you must: feel the rage, shout it out; just stop yourself short of clawing at your enemy’s face.

I think the operative word here is restraint. There’s always a line you cannot cross and then wish to turn back. Everybody’s searching for the light at the end of the tunnel. I know I am.