Showing posts sorted by date for query regret. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query regret. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, May 24, 2013

Book responses (part 4)

From a reader:

I have been following your blog for a while and I've found it fascinating, so naturally when I heard about your book I jumped at a change for a larger glimpse into your life. I preordered it as soon as I heard about it, and when it arrived on my kindle yesterday I spent the whole day lost in the rabbit hole I found myself in. Much of your book resonated very strongly with me, especially your description of ruining people and how often the potential for ruin is enough. I have always implicitly felt this but could never put a name to it. I always considered it a propensity to quit before the end, but when you consider the appreciation of potential as an end in itself, the subsequent ruination is just "busy work" and not worth my time. This is actually a great relief to me, because while I can tolerate moral ambiguity in myself, I absolutely cannot tolerate a weak mind that cannot follow through its projects to their end.

Although it is most likely too early to tell, I consider myself a sociopath, or at least highly sociopathic. As a child, I never really fit into social situations, neither with adults nor children. I always felt the
greatest contempt for what I viewed as adults trying to manipulate me with a sourceless moral code that I did not believe in. It shocked me when they expressed surprise that I would need a justification for morality. With children, I was exceedingly awkward, a trait that I mainly attribute to an upbringing by East Asian parents, but may also have been because I simply didn't care about the frivolities that others did and never made an attempt to pretend otherwise. However, that upbringing also protected me, as the cultural mandate on conformity effectively masked my deviant thoughts and behavior. However, occasionally my utilitarian value set still shone through, like when I kicked one of my best friends in the ribs to make him stop yelling at recess. Afterward, deciding on a whim that honesty was a value I should always observe, I freely admitted to having done so, absolutely enraging my teacher for my apparent stoicism and lack of regret. I suppose I should have shown more contrition, but the truth is I simply didn't care that my friend was injured. I got what I wanted, and there was no permanent damage done. Was I supposed to care further on such trivial, temporary effects?

Although you discussed a lack of emotional affect in mainly humorous terms (people taking your deadpanned threats as jokes), I have found a very practical use for it, pathological lying, A combination of Asian distaste for outward displays of emotion and my sociopathic inability to express emotion has given me the highly useful ability to lie in practically any situation, even to my closest friends, a skill that I hone and treasure. It's pathetically easy to lie to strangers who don't know anything about you and are willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but lying to someone who intimately knows your mannerisms is absolutely beautiful. I have actually ruined someone's inherent trust in people; after talking to me for a few months she can no longer take peoples' statements at face value and always wonders if they are lying, even if said person has never had a history of lying. I'm not sure how an empath would react to something like that, but I personally find it hilarious.

Speaking of empaths, I have never had an "Ann" in my life. No empath has ever healed me or shown me how redeemable empaths are. Instead, I only have people who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge my inherent differences and strive to evoke in me the emotions that they believe me to have. My inability to feel emotions alien to me is only interpreted as further reason that I need this “therapy,” until I am completely overwhelmed and I disengage entirely. I have never met an empath I can deal with, and the people I identify with closest all share sociopathic traits with me. Often, interaction with me has brought those traits to the surface. I'm sure a normal person would watch in horror as I “corrupt” people, but I only feel pride in having so much influence, not just in peoples' actions, but their very philosophies on life.

Unlike you, I have no religious code whatsoever, and my ethics can easily be described as questionable. My morals are based entirely on my aesthetic sense, but, given the nature of my aesthetics, it keeps me out of trouble anyway. What I find most beautiful is predatory grace, which requires, to put it simply, perception and ability. My aesthetics drive me to eschew denial and constantly strive to improve in all areas, which ironically gives me a relatively normal sociopathic life. It also gives me a relatively normal life by empath standards, as evidence of actions is usually ugly, giving me incentive to always cover my tracts. Violence, likewise, if used because I have lost control of the situation and can only resort to brute strength, is disgustingly ugly. Is this a strange code to live by? Clearly it is strange for empaths, but I have gotten the impression that my lifestyle is strange for sociopaths as well. Am I truly deviant or am I just calling the same motivations by a different name? I personally think my aesthetic sense is just a different name for the inborn instincts that everybody has (the will to live, which requires one to improve as to not get eviscerated), but given the reactions I have gotten from sharing my views, I may really be different.

Reading the reviews of your book on Amazon, I was surprised at the number of reviews that criticized the excessive length of the book. I was entirely engrossed from start to finish, but that may be because I responded personally to the material in a way that an empath simply wouldn't. In any case, you specifically described the book as a memoir, not an academic work, something that these reviews seem to have overlooked. I did notice that you left out any accounts of interactions with other sociopaths, even though you vaguely referenced them. Given how thoroughly you accounted your interactions, the story seems one sided. I would love to hear those, but even without those anecdotes, your book elucidated many concepts that I felt but couldn't put to words, and that deserves gratitude, as well as respect.

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Dating other sociopaths


From a reader asking if it is a good idea for sociopaths to date other sociopaths:

My reasons for thinking we're a perfect match:

1)   Point: We need a challenge; everyone else is just too easy to win over. 

      Personal experience: When friends ask me how I do it, I shrug and say something banal because it is useless to try to explain. I feel that “game” is a skill that is fine-tuned throughout life, and even a lifetime of practice will not be of desired effect unless one already possesses an uncanny knack for reading body language, understanding weaknesses and individual needs, deciphering subliminal clues people unknowingly give off, and minimal emotional involvement. The ease at which I get what I want can actually be frustrating. I usually lose interest right after I acquire my target's complete attention and/or whatever I need from him. As I slowly let it go (so as not to burn bridges just in case I ever need that bridge again), I usually get some sort of a love confession. It’s a nice ego boost, but it honestly annoys me. Maybe it annoys me because it reminds me that I am incapable of feeling anything back. More likely, it’s because I have to waste my energy trying to let him down easy. Yet even more likely, it's probably because it reinforces the fact that I'm failing in my search for another of equal mindset. 

      Rationale: Dating another sociopath would be much more invigorating, as it would be a constant challenge for one another’s attention. As stated in Robert Greene’s “The Art of Seduction”, the most successful couples are those in which both people have mastered seduction. Without this, we get bored. We need a game, and an incompetent opponent is no fun after the first round. 

2)   Point: Save the emotional acts.

      Personal experience: I do manipulate, but I do recognize that if I want to remain in respectable societal standing, I have to play towards the emotions of the people I deal with. In my past relationships, I have had to fake what I am not feeling (i.e. pretend to comfort the guy when he’s upset, force myself to do the whole stare-into-each-other’s-eyes thing, convince him that I feel the same way, etc.) I’m not sure if there are other socios out there that feel this, but strong expressions of love and sadness are the two emotions I feel the most phony mimicking. I can literally feel the insincerity seeping out of my pores. Near the end of relationships my tolerance for such acts fizzles out, and I am accused of not caring…and since I generally don’t, he ends up hurt. While I have never felt sorrow or regret from this, I also do not want to leave a trail of broken hearts behind me. It’s essentially damaging my reputation and whatever connections I might need to make in the future. 

      Rationale: Tending to a lover’s emotions is tiresome and an enormous waste of time. Dating a sociopath would eliminate this rollercoaster of ridiculous emotional performances, and we would be able to live in drama-free harmony. Paradoxically, it would actually be a more honest relationship. 

3)   Point: We are attracted to those who are both book-smart and street-smart.

      Personal experience: I am attracted to intellect and power, and I assume that most other socios are as well. I’d rather marry an ugly but manipulative and successful genius than a sexy-as-hell but dumb-as-a-rock superstar. I saw that you mentioned the 48 Laws of Power. I cannot discuss this book with anyone I know. They lack the ability to see the rules as one entity from which we must derive certain principles, based on what our situation and goals are. I consider craftiness along with the ability to gauge situations and handle them with appropriate tact to be my definition of "street-smart". Lacking this quality is a complete turn-off for me. Being book-smart is also essential for my attraction to another; if I feel that I am capable of getting better grades on a factually-based exam than someone, I can't take them seriously. In my dealings with dating, I have come across only one person who has mastered both areas. I have insincerely told several people throughout my life that I "love" them (usually out of obligated reciprocation); I'm unsure of what my take on love is, but I can honestly say that what I feel for that one person is closer to love than what I've felt for anyone else.

      Rationale: There are plenty of book-smart people out there. There are also plenty of street-smart people. To have both is rare- and those who have both have an edge over everybody else. Most socios are able to recognize this potential for success, for they possess it within themselves. Naturally, we are attracted to excellence. Therefore, we are attracted to other sociopaths.

4)   Point: Being a "chameleon" can only be understood by others like us.

      Personal experience: I change my persona depending on what I need and who I am around. My groups of friends are eclectic and from all walks of life. In the past, when the guy I'm with at the time has met a group of friends who views me differently than he does, disaster ensued. "Who are you?", "You didn't tell me you used to do such-and-such things",  "I talked to so-and-so...I don't even know you", and so on. I am forced to purposely avoid letting my significant other meet certain people or hear certain things, in an attempt to maintain his view of who I am to him.

     Rationale: Who we date is usually a frequent escort. That being said, it is difficult for someone who isn't a social chameleon to get along with more than one group of your friends- or anyone who sees you in a different light than your lover does. Dating another sociopath means that he/she will easily fit into your eclectic groups of acquaintances. He/she will understand the necessity of mimicking and will be able to recognize when it is being done. He/she will also be able to mimick, which eliminates the "why do your friends hate me?" mediation and the "what was that all about?" explanations. He/she will understand that the "you" that you are pretending to be is just an act.

      I could probably continue, but I'll wait for some feedback first. Please do note that I am presenting this from theories I've derived from my own experiences. Also note that I am not referring to full-blown psychopaths, sadists, or those that might only date to extort things from/harm the other. Rather, I am referencing "mild" sociopaths like myself, who understand self-interest and are frustrated with dating simpletons.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Opportunism

I often tell people that sociopaths are not necessarily malicious. They wonder what I mean by that and I have always struggled a bit to try to explain. While on this recent trip, however, something happened that I thought was a perfect example of what I mean.

I was sitting eating lunch, including some apples and bananas. I was caught up in conversation with a friend and we weren't paying attention when a monkey jumped into our eating area, grabbed the fruit and ran. It was pretty hilarious. My friend freaked out. The monkey didn't get my food only because I acted quickly to throw my jacket over it.

Ever since then she's been totally anti-monkey, considers them devious creatures. She always says things like, "They're staring me down. They're looking for weakness."And she's probably right. But it's not like they are out to get her because of who she is as a person or are even intending to take her stuff for the purpose of depriving her of her property or harassing her. All they want is her food. They are focused only on themselves. The point is not to hurt her. In fact, the effect that their actions have on others is an unintended consequence. If they could get the fruit in a way that did not hurt her, they would probably do that as often as the stealing. They just are looking for opportunities and when they see them, they quickly act upon them with no hesitation, compunction, or regret.

So too sociopaths frequently act based on a spirit of opportunism. They are not necessarily trying to hurt the people they exploit or victimize. They just see an opening and act on it. That's what I mean about a lack of maliciousness.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Guest post: The Next Generation

I've long been struck by the idea of childhood diagnosis of sociopaths--of exactly how early and easily we can be spotted.  I, myself, was pretty aware of my own differences at an early age.  Couldn't describe it back then, but I always saw the difference, that desire to compete fiercely, and even humiliate, break, and if possible, injure the competition in a way that never led back to me, all while playing adults like fiddles.  Because of this history, I recently recognized another small sociopath with absolute clarity.

Recently, my wife and I were on vacation visiting friends of ours from grad school. They have a five-year-old boy.  It was like looking at a little version of myself.  Seeing this kid take joy in first playing with his puppy, and slowly but surely escalating the play and contact to the level of inflicting intentional pain.  I recognized on his part that he knew precisely when he was crossing a line--looking up, causing the pain when he thought no adult was looking, and the false regret in his voice but clearly not his eyes when caught.  It was like looking back in time into a mirror.  He didn't reserve his violence and force for his pet, either, but also targeted both his parents and my wife and I.   When his parents tried to use the old parenting canard of "you're hurting mommy and daddy" which usually reduces kids to crying, mewling shame-balls, their son only grinned.

If seeing his joy at this weren't a recognition of my own childhood feelings when I caused physical or emotional pain, the cinch was seeing his uncanny understanding of social dynamics, and the privileged role that most kids occupy in society which saves them from adult wrath.  In other words, this child was manipulative beyond his years.  Again, something familiar to myself.

By looking at him, you wouldn't think he's growing up in a nurturing, progressive, yuppie household where both parents hold doctorate degrees (or on second thought, maybe you would).  His parents were oblivious to their little 'angel' and the intentionality of his aggression.  Or at least have developed a practiced obliviousness.

But what surprised me most was how quickly a weekend around a small version of myself stirred up territorial feelings.  Those feelings made me think of the practices of male lions direct towards a competitor's cubs.  Good thing I live half a country away.


Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Our sociopath gets interviewed (part I)

As I mentioned previously, I get a lot of flack from attributing every aspect of my personality to my disorder (and i mostly do think that it is a disorder, as much as i would love to believe otherwise). I've tried to do better at just presenting who I am, leaving it open to interpretation exactly what about my descriptions should be taken to represent me personally and what can be abstracted to apply to sociopaths in general. In answering the following questions from a reader, then, I do not claim to speak for all sociopaths, but instead express what I have personally experienced and observed:

Question 1: I have two sociopath friends who frequently engage me in power struggles. What surprises me in both of them is, even though they are pattern-breakers, they have a pretty obvious attack pattern which becomes very predictable after the 3rd-4th attack. You just have to wait a while and pretend to become a victim, pretend to lose until it is revealed. What do you think about this pattern? Are sociopaths able to surprise other people but not prone to surprise themselves? Do they believe that they have consistent behaviour? Would breaking their pattern disturb them in any way?

Answer: Interesting observation, and congratulations for performing so well against sociopaths. I think that we in the sociopath community would like to think that all sociopaths are clever and good at what they do, but the truth is that many of them are stupid, and those are the types who usually end up in prison for taking unnecessary risks. It's true that sociopaths think differently from empaths; this can give them the advantage of surprise in a fight, particularly if their identity as a sociopath is unknown. Despite their reputation as being outside-the-box thinkers, however, sociopaths don't seem to be particularly adaptable. Their general strategy is to focus most of their efforts on attack, little on defense. That mixed with a tendency for overconfidence can leave them vulnerable to surprise attacks, particularly by clever defensive players like yourself. I have been duped before in a manner similar to what you describe (victim pretending to be weak until my guard is down, then asserting dominance), and it was very disturbing. I myself have used shamefully simple tactics on other sociopaths I know, like flattery, so you would think i should know better. (By the way, flattery works shockingly well on sociopaths.) But in general, sociopaths seem to not realize that their own tricks can be used against them. Like the two con men in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels falling into the trap of their "victim," sociopaths can get so caught up in the hunt that they forget they can also be hunted.

Question 2: You don't feel much, but what makes you feel? Does losing a game make you feel, or the death of someone, or a kiss?

Answer: Feeling emotions = loss of power/control, so I try to be very judicious about how and when I feel emotions. Interestingly, I think that to compensate for the lack of feeling, I have super sensitivity to sensory stimulation. Music, good food, beauty--simple things can lead to debilitating waves of pleasure, even shivers of ecstasy. In terms of emotion, there are certain emotions that I feel very well, and others not so much. Instead of frustration, I usually feel anger; instead of love, gratitude; instead of happiness, pleasure or satisfaction; instead of remorse or guilt, regret; instead of sorrow, disappointment. I have a different (more limited) emotional palette than most people, particularly those of my same socioeconomic and cultural background. In terms of what makes me feel, I get angry when a friend cries because I have hurt them. I feel grateful when I hear my mother's voice. I feel pleasure when I am kissed, satisfaction when I have played a game well, regret and disappointment when I have played a game poorly or have betrayed myself. When I lose someone, I feel their lack in same proportion to how I felt their presence before.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Guilt

I'm still learning a lot about myself. For instance, I was prompted recently to think about "guilt." A reader writes:
Sometimes I feel what I think may be guilt, but there's always a metaphorical voice in the back of my head telling me, "No, you only feel that way because your image was tarnished." That "voice" is incredibly difficult to pay attention to, by the way. I feel a horrible feeling whenever I do something that hurts someone and it can be linked back to me. If there is no link to me, I don't feel anything. It's very hard for me to differentiate between this and guilt, and I've frequently used it to justify my own humanity. But why don't I feel such things if nobody knows who caused it? It can't be guilt. I only care when there are consequences for me.
I reply:
That is interesting how you feel bad only when you are caught, essentially. I mean, it's a trite phrase -- "he's only sorry he got caught" -- but it is so true for me. I can actually feel really really badly about things that I got caught for, for whatever reason. But the phrase doesn't fit exactly. It's not like I feel disappointed that I couldn't get away with it. I just feel ... out of sorts. I feel like the world is an ugly place where I don't belong. That is what makes me feel bad. Definitely not, "oh, poor person I hurt." It's more like, "poor me for having to live in this ugly world and deal with this." This happened to me very recently when I stole/borrowed something from my neighbor, hoping she would never find out before I returned it. She did find out, though, and confronted me about it. Or she at least asked me about it and I didn't know what she knew so I just came clean, but spun a story of emergency, etc., figuring that would be better for me than to be caught in a lie. But she wouldn't have it. She threatened to call the authorities. Now that seemed like an overreaction by anyone's standards, but for some reason it deeply disturbed me. I think I realized how vulnerable I am, how hated I am just by virtue of what I am. I didn't really think about it at the time, but what you wrote really made sense to me. I wouldn't have felt the least tinge of guilt if I had never been caught, but being caught made me feel all sorts of guilt, or what felt like guilt at least. Maybe it was just regret.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Living in the moment

I read this NY Times column and thought it was an interesting and hopefully relatable example of how (I believe) sociopaths think most of the time, in terms of compartmentalizing fear and living in the moment.  The author is describing how liberating it feels to ride a bike in busy, traffic-ridden New York because he is plagued by a vague sense of anxiety, but is rather focused and in the moment:


Natural selection has made us hypervigilant, obsessively replaying our mistakes and imagining worst-case scenarios. And the fact that we’ve eliminated almost all of the immediate threats from our environment, like leopards and Hittites, has only made us even more jittery, because we’re now constantly anticipating disasters that are never going to happen: the prowler/rapist/serial killer lurking in the closet, a pandemic of Ebola/Bird Flu/Hantavirus, the imminent fascist/socialist/zombie takeover. The disasters that do befall us are mostly slow, incremental ones that seem abstract and faraway until they suddenly blindside us, like heart disease and foreclosure. So we go about our days safer and more comfortable than human beings have been in five million years, constantly hunched and growling with a low level of fight-or-flight chemicals in our bloodstreams. My doctor assures me that this is the cause of most of our chronic back and neck problems; my dentist says nocturnal tooth-grinding became so endemic in New York after 9/11 it actually changed the shapes of people’s faces by enlarging their masseter muscles. He sells a lot of night guards.

Which is why it’s such a relief, an exhilarating joy, to break the clammy paralysis of worry and place yourself at last in real physical danger. Even though it’s the time when I am at most immediate risk, riding my bike in Manhattan traffic is also one of the only times when I am never anxious or afraid — not even when a cab door swings open right in front of me, some bluetoothed doofus strides into my path, or a dump truck’s fender drifts within an inch of my leg. At those moments fear is a low neurological priority that would only interfere with my reaction time, like a panicky manager shoved aside by competent, grim-faced engineers in a crisis. I doubt that the victims of sudden violent accidents die terrified; they’re probably extremely alert, brains gone pretty much blank while their galvanized bodies try to figure out what to do. I don’t think our minds are designed to accept that there’s no way out. Based on my own close calls, I suspect that if I am killed while biking, the state of mind in which I am likeliest to die is extreme annoyance. And at least it won’t be by drowning.
***
When I’m balanced on two thin wheels at 30 miles an hour, gauging distance, adjusting course, making hundreds of unconscious calculations every second, that idiot chatterbox in my head is kept too busy to get a word in. I’ve heard people say the same thing about rock-climbing: how it shrinks your universe to the half-inch of rock surface immediately in front of you, this crevice, that toehold. Biking is split-second fast and rock-climbing painstakingly slow, but both practices silence the noise of the mind and render self-consciousness blissfully impossible. You become the anonymous hero of that old story, Man versus the Universe. Your brain’s glad to finally have a real job to do, instead of all that trivial busywork. You are all action, no deliberation. You are forced, under pain of death, to quit all that silly ideation and pay attention. It’s meditation at gunpoint.

I’m convinced these are the conditions in which we evolved to thrive: under moderate threat of death at all times, brain and body fully integrated, senses on high alert, completely engaged with our environment. It is, if not how we’re happiest — we’re probably happiest in a hot tub with a martini and a very good naked friend — how we are most fully and electrically alive. Of course we can’t sustain this state of mind for too long. People who go through their whole lives operating on impulse tend to end up in jail. We are no longer purely animals, living only in the moment; we are the creatures who live in time, as salamanders live in fire, prisoners of memory and imagination, tortured with dread and regret. That other, extra-temporal perspective is not the whole reality of our condition. It’s more like the view from the top of the Empire State Building, of people as infinitesimal dots circulating ceaselessly through a grid. Eventually we have to descend back to street level, rejoin the milling mass and take up our lives; you lock up your bike and become hostage to the hours again. But it’s at those moments that I become briefly conscious of what I actually am — a fleeting entity stripped of ego and history in an evanescent present, like a man running in frames of celluloid, his consciousness flickering from one instant to the next.

How does the sociopath accomplish this in daily life?  I believe through extreme compartmentalizing, that actually allows him to quiet all of the mental buzz clogging up most people's neural pathways and hyperfocusing on the moment.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

On becoming a sociopath (female)

From a reader:
 
In terms of ASPD: I still am, to a degree, but I am much less inclined to that disorder than I was as a  child. For the high-functioning sociopath, it is mandatory for him to have a relationship with himself. He lacks any sort of internal social inhibition, and therefore, he doesn't automatically incorporate the majority ethics. As a kid, I was at my most impulsive. Until I came to develop a code rooted in reason, rather than guilt, I was all over the place. People take for granted "right" and "wrong,” and many don’t question the ‘why’ behind it until they are much older, because they may cruise along on autopilot with the common knowledge that stealing is bad, and that they feel bad. If the sociopath can't introspect, however, he'll grow into a dangerous criminal as he hits adulthood and gains the means. For the sociopath, he has to mature early in, or face possible legal consequences for the rest of his life.  Although being a female and a sociopath is unique, I am fortunate in this respect. If I were a man, there’s a great chance that I would not have made it.
    
I hate to sound sexist, but it’s the truth: men are typically stronger than women. At the age of eight, I was already fantasizing about sex crimes. I remember thinking, verbatim, that it wasn’t “enough to love. You have to rip apart.” For me, cuddling and kissing could only go so far before the emptiness sank in. The threshold was reached, and boredom stirred. A man, or woman, could satisfy with soft whispers and affection to a point. Then, to overcome that boundary, sadism came to play. The only way I felt that I could truly share something with another human being, was to torture and to push him over the edge. There was excitement in this, and my own brand of worship. I didn’t realize that my desire was abnormal. For a long time, I didn’t realize that others weren’t like me. I observed them, and I thought that we were putting on a show, and so I acted, too. I watched and waited, half-expecting an explosion as one of us broke. It never came. Every now and again, I saw them clearly and was slammed with questions. "Is this real?" I wanted to capture their faces, to make them look at me. I lived in denial.
    
Bottom line: I stayed out of prison because I lacked the brute muscles to kill, and the dedication to go through with plans (I had constructed a motif in my head). Twice, I snapped on human beings and did everything in my carnal power to injure them, craving their expressions, because the fear and shock filled up a void within me. It was a foreign substance, and, as such, I took it as a druggie. 
    
I was let down in my weakness. I didn’t go after children my age, but lashed out against men who I perceived as strong. I wanted the triumph of breaking them, and I fell short. It was humiliating to have revealed and lost. Thus, I retreated to my intellect, and became the cult-starter. I manipulated without touch, and although, in the end, the new approach could have proved even more dangerous than the corporeal given my structure, I was appeased by little stunts, and, thankfully, came to my senses before moving onto greater defeats. Honestly, I just grew up, and trust me when I say that if I had waited even another year, given the crowd that I had gathered, things would be different. I have formalized legal opinions now, and a definition for good and evil, but I don’t possess the faculty of remorse. I can regret: regret meaning, I can find the consequences of something not to my enjoyment, and I can wish that I had acted otherwise, but, if not caught, I don’t have remorse, in that I don’t feel guilt for doing what I see as justifiably illegal. Hence, my version of “right” and “wrong” revolves around what is good for me, psychologically. Unrestrained, I slip and intentionally perform acts which I reject, lawfully, when statistics suggest a lapse in capture, but I do try to avoid this more often than not, because, regardless of how good I am, it’s never surefire.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

It never entered my mind

I'm mildly to medium-ly obsessed with the song "It never entered my mind."



To me there is only one thing that really can haunt me, and this sensation, whatever it is, is so perfectly incapsulated by this song.  It is partly a worry that I am missing out on something, but it's worse than that.  It's more the worry that I will regret the decisions I have made because I have missed out on something.

One of my favorite movies is the Woody Allen comedy Sweet and Lowdown.  The protagonist is a completely pompous jazz guitarist from the early half of the last century: a delusional, raging narcissist, beautifully talented, but without any real emotion in his playing.   He meets and (sort of) falls in love with a mute girl named Hattie, played incomparably by Samantha Morton.



She puts up with him like no one else will and he finds that even the simplest pleasures of life are made more pleasurable with her beside him.  Still, he feels like he deserves better (or just more) so breaks up with her about halfway through the movie:



He continues his hijinks through the second half of the movie and even marries an icy femme fatale played by Uma Thurman.  Near the end of the movie he runs into Hattie again.  She is married now and even has children.  He is disappointed, but tries to play it off.  Later that night he tries to console himself by doing some of his favorite activities: shooting rats by the train station and playing the guitar.  Frustrated and emotionally overcome he grabs the guitar by the neck and slams it into a nearby tree, shattering it.  He is a man whose only goal was his own happiness, who has consistently chosen without compunction whatever he thought would make him most happy, and yet he is not happy.  As he clubs the tree with the guitar over and over again he screams, "I made a mistake!  I made a mistake!"

This scene haunts me.  This man thought he was choosing happiness, and chose as wisely as he could, but still ended up crippled by regret.  But it's not the fact that he happens to end up alone that's disturbing.  I acknowledge that much of life is chance and all sorts of bad things might happen to me during life.  I'm fine with that.  The thing that haunts me more than anything else is the thought that I could unwittingly be the author of my own unhappiness -- unhappiness so surprising that it never entered my mind that things could play out that way.  It is the ultimate in powerlessness -- not just the thought that nothing I do really matters, but that things I do could matter and actually make things worse.

Of the negative emotions I feel, regret is the saddest and strongest.

It never entered my mind:
I don't care if there's powder on my nose
I don't care if my hairdo is in place
I've lost the very meaning of repose
I never put a mudpack on my face
Oh, who'd have thought that I'd walk in a daze
Now I never go to shows at night but just to matinees
Now I see the show and home I go

Once I laughed when I heard you saying
That I'd be playing solitaire
Uneasy in my easy chair
It never entered my mind
Once you told me I was mistaken
That I'd awaken with the sun
And order orange juice for one
It never entered my mind

You have what I lack myself
And now I even have to scratch my back myself

Once you warned me that if you scorned me
I'd sing the maiden's prayer again
And wish that you were there again
To get into my hair again
It never entered my mind

Monday, October 31, 2011

Regret vs. remorse

I have actually forgotten where I got this from, but I thought it was an interesting etymological explanation of what I have always intuited about regret vs. remorse.
I always think of connotation - REMORSE "1325–75; Middle English < Middle French remors < Medieval Latin remorsus, equivalent to Latin remord ( ere ) to bite again, vex, nag ( re- re- + mordere to bite) + -tus suffix of v. action, with dt > s; see mordant" Defined as a "deep and painful regret for wrongdoing; compunction." Remorse seems to follow a morally wrong decision. REGRET "1300–50; Middle English regretten (v.) < Middle French regreter, Old French, equivalent to re- re- + -greter, perhaps < Germanic ( compare greet2 )" Defined as alternatively "a sense of loss, disappointment, dissatisfaction, etc" or "a feeling of sorrow or remorse for a fault, act, loss, disappointment, etc." It is interesting that regret's second definition denotes a relationship with remorse but I have always thought that regret follows a decision that can be morally wrong but might just be a function of maturity. We have remorse for something that is unequivocally wrong and we feel regret for something that could be wrong but might just be stupid.

For me, regret means either feeling bad about something I get caught at OR a missed opportunity. Remorse is more connected to morality and is when I feel bad because I know what I have done is wrong (according to my conscience and internal compass).
I agree particularly with the last paragraph--that regret is wishing things could have gone differently, and remorse seems to be associated with a sense of guilt.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

"Emotion is weakness"

From a reader:
I recently went looking through my old schoolwork from ages passed and was somewhat surprised to find that the sociopathic vein in my writing was clearly expressed as early as sixth grade where I, in a possibly narcissistic move, took the time to keep a book filled with my quotes. One of the first quotes simply stated "Emotion is weakness." This was around the same time that I started receiving court-mandated therapy to cover any possible psychological side effects of my parent's divorce. Those therapy sessions were where I first realized that I was different. I saw these sessions from the viewpoint of a bystander, and marveled at how stupid my therapist was. I made sure to get on her good side, covering up my extremely introverted personality by bringing comic books (Calvin and Hobbes) and using the topics of different strips to control the flow of our discussion. In later meetings, I managed to use up most of the time by getting the therapist to talk about herself. Later, I eavesdropped on her reporting to my mother that I was charming, outgoing, and generally well adjusted. It was then that I decided that I never wanted to be normal, to be as blind and stupid as this woman. My mother became friends with her and I had to visit often. It was annoying until she died of cancer, a few years later.

I bought my first copy of The Art of War in seventh grade, Machiavelli's The Prince in ninth. By eleventh grade, I had a fully formed self-concept, complete with a self-diagnosis of ASPD, and took home the school library's copy of Mein Kampf, only to be disappointed by the obscuring emotion that riddled the work. Most of my time since sixth grade has been spent furthering my self-concept, and honing my skills. The Myers Briggs personality inventory classified me as a strong INTJ (The mastermind) with 20 out of 20 points in introversion. I had two close friends at the time, and both of them were also INTJ's (which only appear in 1% of the population), as well as being in the highest intellectual tier. I don't form complete social networks; I merely connect with the 'elite' and the 'delinquents' (My esoteric personality is largely ignored by the vast majority) who think as I do. From them, I had complete access to whatever I wanted.

However, problems arose at home, where my addictive personality resulted in major cracks in my mask, leading to a rift between my father and I; and causing a complete lack of trust between us. It was a major obstacle in my maneuverings until I left home. My method of theft from him had to be complicated multiple times until it became easier to simply get money in other ways.

During the last few years of high school, my relationship was so grating that I constantly had to seek catharsis, which led to increasingly risky activities. Fortunately, I still had enough peace of mind to think before acting and to plan out these releases, although the family dog almost died (luckily, the only bruises were on her neck, which could be explained away) and I was almost caught breaking into a nearby university at three in the morning (The night Janitor was there early, which I later learned was due to an event scheduled later that day).

During philosophical conversations with my inner circle, I was forced to defend my actions (as part of the argument, no one was offended, they’d done worse) so I stated my worldview something like this: I don’t care if there’s a god or an afterlife because either way, I won’t know until I’m dead. I believe that nothing exists for a purpose, and the only meaning in this world is the meaning we create for ourselves. My ultimate goal in life is something to give meaning, something almost impossible to achieve (I chose world domination because I could play it off as a joke if anyone asked). Long-term hedonism is good, but the will to power saves one the time of making reasons, because it is a reason in and of itself. Live life with one principle, to regret nothing.

Those are all the answers I need.

-Potens

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Feelings (part 3)

The reader responds (edited for length):
What I can say for sure is that I have changed. Yes, of course we are different people now than when we were young, thank the gods and the nine circles, but... The extent of how much my personality and my behavior has altered - and how different I am aware that I act while on the pills - will have to be my character witness. When I was young I was impulsive and brash, a bit clueless and devil-may-care. I was also very honest for a child, and a bit sensitive since I had self-esteem issues, which is part of what led to my depression. And I know I had a sense of guilt, because of a few admissions I can recall I made voluntarily. Not so much the case after [the emotional dissociation]. And I think that's another crucial point; when I take the pills (Metamina 5mg capsules, by the by) much of my hesitation to stop and to go back to "normal" is out of what I think is a sense that I am betraying someone or something.

And if that isn't guilt, then perhaps I never did know the feeling of it, or the definition. And isn't guilt really the crucial point, when it comes to the separation of the socios and psychos from the normals?
M.E.: I wanted to comment a little bit about what you said about guilt.

I don't really know what people mean by guilt. I find that particular diagnostic criteria difficult to pin down and I'm not entirely sure that sociopaths never feel a type of regret or cognitive dissonance that is essentially what people mean by guilt. By regret I mean wishing things had gone a different way or you had made a different choice (without necessarily assigning moralistic values to your choices). By cognitive dissonance, I mean that you do something that is not in harmony with your personal view of yourself.

Now I think that guilt definitely must have elements of regret and cognitive dissonance to it, but is it something more? Is there a third ingredient, perhaps in which you feel the hurt you caused another as if you had hurt yourself, or perhaps for the religious you feel like you are being cast further away from the divine? I think the emotion "guilt" is a lot more complicated than people acknowledge. I think when people say that sociopaths are "remorseless" or "don't feel guilt," at the very least they mean that sociopaths are able to do certain things that most people would consider morally wrong without seeing or feeling the "wrongness" of them. I don't know if that means that a sociopath is categorically incapable of feeling "guilt," but I guess it would depend on one's definition.

But self-knowledge is such a Sisyphean endeavor, don't you think? At least I have recently found it to be a cycle of self discovery and self doubt.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

The Killer Inside Me

I recently watched The Killer Inside Me. Casey Affleck plays a sheriff's deputy psychopathic killer with a "sickness" that seeks to break free. It's not the best portrayal of a psychopath I have seen, in fact it's a little hackneyed. I wonder if the book was any better in this regard, according to Stanley Kubrick "Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered." There are a couple interesting reasons to watch the film, though.

The movie has a somewhat unique brand of indiscriminate killings. The method and mode of the killings appear unfathomable, presumably because there is some self-delusion or insanity going on in the mind of the killer, but it's never made explicit. He convinces himself that he needs to kill these people, that it is the only thing to do and the facts support his conclusions to a certain extent but not quite. The audience is left thinking, "I can sort of see why he did that, but it also seems like a mistake."

This is unlike either most horror films where the killings are unapologetically senseless or crime dramas where the killings are unapologetically telelogical. The resulting depictions of killing are all the more disturbing because of this aspect -- you wonder whether he isn't jumping to conclusions, doing something that he may regret when he finds out the real facts. It reminds me of the same horrific self-justifications in Boxing Helena that leads the protagonist to perform amputations on the object of his obsession. People who think rationally, people who have not killed or maimed for pleasure watch these types of movies and squirm because they can't quite convince themselves that this could never happen to them. They know of their own powers of self-deception and think, there but for the grace of God go I.

The other fun aspect of the film's indiscriminate killings is seeing how the victims each respond. In one scene our killer is explaining the deaths of two people to a friend of his. The friend volunteers that the victims must have had it coming, to which the killer replies, "No one has it coming. That's why no one can see it coming." Indeed, because the killings are relatively unprovoked and unwarranted, none of his victims do see it coming and they all react to the killings in different ways. One moment they are self-assured, even making small demands of the killer, "not now," "get dressed," "where's the money," etc. In just a few moments they are being killed and staring up at him with not just surprise, but real disbelief. For a second you can see them wonder, "how could this possibly be happening?" as if they just saw a law of physics being violated. It makes you realize how entitled we all feel, how everyone believes that they have certain rights that will never be violated, could never be violated, chief among them being the right to life. Yet here is an individual who routinely violates those rights, with no repercussions. Some of the killings are done in such odd ways that the audience also feels disbelief, "Can you really die that way?" and you realize that the world holds many more dangers than you ever dared admit to yourself.

Best quote by the creepy Bill Pullman: "A weed is a plant out of place. I find a hollyhock in my cornfield, and it's a weed. I find it in my yard, and it's a flower. You're in my yard."



Boxing Helena:

Monday, January 17, 2011

Morning after pill for conscience

A reader writes:
I came across this article in the Village Voice. It’s about the possibility of a “morning after pill” for the conscience. This pill would prevent moral emotions like remorse and regret. As you’ll see in the article, the thought is that they’d ostensibly use this kind of medication to ease the effects of PTSD, especially for active duty, on the battlefront soldiers. After all, who wants to live with the self-imposed emotional suffering that seems to accompany killing people in a war zone? But of course, the ramifications of being able to do away with remorse and guilt with a pill will come with debate on how moral using such a pill would be. Is it morally right to deny our fighting men and women a means to effectively eradicate the most painful emotional effects of being on the front lines in a war that the nation asked them to fight in the first place? On the other hand, is it morally right to create a pharmaceutical that might turn off emotions that act as a safeguard against mankind’s less than ethical impulses? We all know such a drug would not stay within the confines of the military forever. Does science really want to, in effect, sell sociopathy in a bottle?

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Sociopathic traits: lack of guilt

I thought that this was an interesting comment from a fairly recent post:
People that think they have traits they could use to label themselves as sociopaths. Most aren't, so sorry! Go get another label, that one is full. Having those traits, and having them in a pathological level are not the same cup of tea. Get over it! This is one of the things money won't get you.

When doing that trait test, reading "lack of remorse" - imagine your best at lacking remorse, the true best you can. And that's not it, is that point that you can no longer have imagination to take it to the next level. After, do the same to every other trait.

But there has to be something wrong with people that wish they were sociopaths. And here is the bullseye - maybe some people are ready to take themselves as socio's but not as anything else.

This is the kind of people I think hangs around here, in very general alineas, and they are only bringing more fuss to a matter that is allready hard to deal with or understand even from a MD's skills.
I wanted to address just one aspect of this comment -- the guiltlessness. The commentator suggests that to test whether you are a sociopath, think of your most remorseless moment, then imagine something that you can't even imagine because you're not a sociopath and that's still not even close to how sociopaths actually feel about guilt.

I wonder if this is really true. I know that a lot of people think that lack of guilt or remorse is a key identifying trait in a sociopath, but I think this is a trait that many (if not most) sociopaths would not self-identify with, but rather one that third party observers blithely claim to have observed in sociopaths with little to no evidence supporting it.

Here's how I think this myth got started. Take a typical situation you might encounter in a prison setting: convicted sociopath criminal justifies some reprehensible act he did by blaming his behavior on the victim: "she had it coming." The sociopath does not seem to feel guilt for something he should clearly be feeling remorse, does not even understand why he should feel guilt for that behavior. Ergo, sociopaths do not feel guilt.

Really? Why would a sociopath even bother to justify his behavior ("she had it coming") if he was incapable of feeling anything even resembling regret?

What is really happening? I think that sociopaths believe that they feel "guilt" or "remorse" over some things, just not for what people expect them to feel guilt or remorse. In the example above, I think the sociopath was simply expressing that the action was warranted ("she had it coming"), so there was nothing to feel guilty about. Sociopaths do not necessarily value (or are even aware of) society's rules or moral standards and they feel little to no cognitive dissonance for violating these standards. They may, however, feel cognitive dissonance, or regret, over violating one of their own beliefs about who they are, or what type of world they live in. Sociopaths may feel this cognitive dissonance less frequently than normal people because it is so easy for them to justify their own behavior ex post facto and most "successful" sociopaths would have enough control and foresight to typically avoid breaking their own rules. But feeling it at inappropriate times (and rarely), does not mean that they cannot "feel" it.

So do sociopaths feel guilt? I think a lot of sociopaths would say that they do, or at least have. Do they feel guilt every time society thinks they should? No, not necessarily. People need to understand that lack of "conscience" or "empathy" does not necessarily equate with an inability to feel remorse. But bonus points for anyone who identifies when "lack of guilt" was first used by the psychological community to demonize us further.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Another sociopath story (part 2)

As for empathy, I used to have traces of it as a teenager but now it seems to have faded into oblivion. (Hence I always wondered if you can turn narcissist/sociopath after the age of 15, yet I've read many times that the onset of both conditions is usually during early childhood.) I do sometimes wonder, however, whether what I now remember as "moments of empathy" was mere self-manipulation. For one, I cannot remember ever crying about anything, besides a single major personal defeat. I never lost my sleep or got anxious about another person, though I've experienced both in relation to my own problems. I have felt anger and even gratitude (or chivalry, if you prefer), I have felt regret and embarrassment, but I haven't felt guilt or remorse to any meaningful degree.

Another awkward thing is... I have never, EVER been depressed in my life. Not a single day. I believe I can evade depression forever because I have a very helpful, well-developed skill: the ability to manipulate myself in erasing memories. I have read many times in your blog that our flexible identities can create fake memories, so I suppose all of us can easily erase memories as well. For example, if I experience a rejection in the context of dating, I can totally "forget" about it, not just dehumanize or attack the credibility and worthiness of my rejector. Complete and utter removal of the unpleasant event from history. Maybe this explains our rumored lack of ability to learn from past mistakes and punishment strategies... maybe we just erase the mistake/punishment from our textbooks and just move on.

Yet, although I do not feel depression/melancholy, I often used to experience emptiness and a lack of identity. "Normal" people seem to have a very static self-image, even when they're not fully aware of it. Their lives have structure and coherence, and they can track their progress over time. (On the flip side, they can get pretty morose if their progress has stalled because of this.) I, on the other hand, can never "settle." I feel I want to be everything and everyone. (And I can!) But very often I have NO IDEA who I really am. Your blog has been extremely helpful in this respect. I now define myself more accurately as the "mask bearer." I am perfectly fine not being "something in particular," but "something that can turn into anything." The only real problem for me now is keeping track of my actual preferences, my real wants, and not overly assimilate the preferences of the persona I'm pretending to be. But I'm getting better at it.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Conversation with a friend

This is a very early, pre-blog conversation I had with a friend.
M.E.: The other night I met these strangers and within hours we had all outted ourselves as sociopaths and started collaborating on internet startup ideas. There was one non-socio there who was asking all these questions.

Friend: Do you really feel no guilt?

M.E.: No, I feel guilt

Friend: Well, that's not very sociopath of you.

M.E.: Well, I am not full sociopath then maybe. But I mean, it's a different kind of guilt.

Friend: Are those people full?

M.E.: I don't know. The other guy was funny, he was like "good sociopaths" do this. I think it is true that there are good sociopaths. I don't know if I feel guilt. I feel regret.

Friend: How many of the symptoms do you think you have? It seems like a lot, I guess.

M.E.: I dunno, like everyone has different symptoms because they deal with the lack of empathy in different ways. Some people see it as a lack and try to make up for it, others don't see it as a lack at all and sort of exploit it. So the symptoms are very varied.

Friend: It seems that there are plenty of consistent things.

M.E.: Ha, yeah, well everyone is manipulative, everyone is trying to avoid detection, everyone is a little reckless. Anyway, I told the empath that it is probably harder for socipaths to become an empath than for empaths to become a sociopath.

Friend: Hah, funny that you call him an empath.

M.E.: Because there is low road and high road mental processes going on. High road is conscious thought, low road is unconscious instinct type thought. So I tried to explain to him that sociopaths are essentially just shifting way more of their decisions into high road thought than the typical empath. Empaths can practice that and get good at making conscious decisions about everything (socio). But how can socios conscious force decisions into the unconscious? I think it could happen but it would have to be through the influences of someone else training you, something that you could remain unaware of.

Friend: It's not really like that

M.E.: Like what?

Friend: high/low

M.E.: Yeah, it is kind of

Friend: Well, we disagree

M.E.: Or I mean, pop science stuff I have read has said that the brain works that way. Are you saying that that isn't the distinction between socios and empaths? Or just that the mind doesn't work that way? Or not all high roaders are socios?

Friend: It's not that you're more conscious. It's that all your conscious thoughts are focused on the single-minded goal of achieving your interests. To the destruction of others. Everything is a war game to you and the fact that you are more conscious than most just means that there are lots of dumb people.

M.E.: Yeah, good point. You hate that I am a sociopath?

Friend: That's like saying I hate you because of your gender or ethnicity. Doesn't mean anything, really.

M.E.: You hate the sociopath in me, though? You hate the tendencies?

Friend: Well, obviously I don't like that you are manipulative and megalomaniacal and reckless abt your life and others. But I mean, that's just a given, isn't it?

M.E.: Given meaning that's just who I am and always have been?

Friend: And I mean, who knows what else arises from you believing you're a sociopath. That's just who you are. Alright sociopath, I'm going to maybe try to take a nap.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Mr. Birdick responds

Mr. Birdick gets analyzed by "Dr. Robert" and responds:
Number one, I’ve never actually copped to being a "psychopath". I might score high on the PCL-R, but not high enough to warrant that particular “diagnosis”. I believe that there is a meaningful difference between psychopaths and sociopaths.

Second, whether I can "fathom" other people’s suffering is an irrelevant red herring. My feeling sorrowful or righteously angry when I hear about someone else’s pain does not change things for that person -- it would not change the reality of the man in the picture or make the Iraq war and all of its associated consequences disappear. Dr. Robert’s regret, his remorse, his compassion may mean the world to him but it means nothing at all to the man in the picture.

Third, I still believe that Dr. Robert’s photo placement was manipulative to the degree that it was deliberately designed, by his own admission, to induce emotions in other people in order to prove a point. He was trying to prove himself and to his faithful readers that he was right and the father wrong. Dr. Robert was acting in a self-serving, manipulative fashion. His expression of moral horror served only one purpose -- his.

Fourth, for someone as eager to paint me as arrogantly certain of my superiority, Dr. Robert comes off as awfully... superior, to the point of being downright condescending. Doesn’t the deliberate use of terms like “limitation” and later “deficiency” imply that? Dr. Robert likes to think of himself as a compassionate, liberal and open minded soul, but who is also in fact more judgmental and moralistic than he cares to let on, even to himself. And I caught the misspelling of my name. Quite a class act our Dr. Robert, isn’t he?

Finally, I love it when so called empathic people tell me what I do and do not believe without bothering to ask me. He completely misrepresents my thoughts on those who practice the healing arts. The people that I believe are “foolish, sentimental, and weak” are those that allow others to run roughshod over them; to destroy what they’ve spent a lifetime building; or to allow any system of ethics to dictate, a priori, the decisions that must be made in real time because of their adherence to morality or principles.

It’s too bad Dr. Robert decided that he needed to prove his mettle as a compassionate, liberal healer (how much better he is than the poor, deluded ‘psychopath’), by writing in such an obvious and overtly manipulative fashion. I’d say he was far more concerned with demonstrating his so called great compassion than he was in answering Brian Lippman’s question. Then again, moral hypocrisy, especially the unconscious kind, is so typical for the conscience bound.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Sociopaths in literature: E.M. Forster's Maurice

A slow nature such as Maurice's appears insensitive, for it needs time even to feel. Its instinct is to assume that nothing either for good or evil has happened, and to resist the invader. Once gripped, it feels acutely, and its sensations in love are particularly profound. Given time, it can know and impart ecstasy; given time, it can sink to the heart of Hell. Thus it was that his agony began as a slight regret; sleepless nights and lonely days must intensify it into a frenzy that consumed him. It worked inwards, till it touched the root whence body and soul both spring, the "I" that he had been trained to obscure, and, realized at last, doubled its power and grew superhuman. For it might have been joy. New worlds broke loose in him at this, and he saw from the vastness of the ruin what ecstasy he had lost, what a communion.

Maybe not full-fledged sociopath, maybe just baby or very high functioning sociopath, maybe just British.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Regret

I don't know if I have ever felt remorse, but I've definitely felt regret. I have several formerly close friends/former love interests who no longer speak to me. The first couple times it happened were particularly heart breaking. I was just starting to realize that I was different, but reckless about it still and a little in denial about the extent of the difference. To one I even confessed that I had a tendency to treat people in my life like paper napkins -- use them all up and then dispose of them. I didn't really mind being different back then, but I already understood how toxic it could be to others.

One particular old incident still haunts me. I had a rocky friendship with someone I admired a great deal. A long school trip coincided with our most recent fight, and we had to spend time together on a bus. At one point in the trip we were stopped and I watched my friend get off the bus. I looked out the window and saw the person engaged in an impromptu game with classmates. Taking advantage of the moment, I rifled through my friend's belongings and found a personal notebook/journal. I was so desperate to know what my friend thought of me that I immediately starting skimming it. Less than a minute later i looked out the window and couldn't see my friend anywhere. I panicked, threw the notebook down on the ground, and started running for the bus door where I encountered the friend. Trying to distract and buy myself time, I playfully tackled my friend to the floor. My friend was charmed by the playful gesture and seemed willing to reconcile. Once my friend looked over and saw the journal on the ground, however, I knew it was all over. I'd never seen hatred like that in someone's eyes before. I knew in an instant what I had done and what it had cost me.

I don't blame people for hating me. I hate myself a little. Not everything destructive in my life was my fault or anything I would have done differently, but some of it I deeply regret.
Join Amazon Prime - Watch Over 40,000 Movies

.

Comments are unmoderated. Blog owner is not responsible for third party content. By leaving comments on the blog, commenters give license to the blog owner to reprint attributed comments in any form.