They pissed me off, so i'm writing about the bastards.

I friend recently confided in me about some sexually harassing comments that had once been said to them. Other friends in the past have told me stories of how they have been used, mistreated, and shamed by friends, family, and strangers alike. I also recently read a story about how the runner-up for America’s Next Top Model had been raped by her friends after she was intoxicated at a party.

Her friends did this. Oh, and to add insult to injury the entire party didn’t do anything, they just stood by recording it with their cell-phones. That’s right, they recorded it and drank beer while they raped their friend. When I hear stories like this I want to explode. Part of me wants nothing more than to grab the nearest sharp implement and make a lasting impression with them.

This sheer apathy angers me, the fact that these people care nothing for those around them, the fact that how they are acting may hurt other people doesn’t even occur to them. I remember watching some crime drama back in the day and in it a rapist broke into a house and started to attack a woman. She begged for mercy but he refused to back down, when she shoved him off and grabbed a gun he began to beg for mercy, begging her not to shoot. He begged for the mercy he had previously refused to show.

This is the idea that people are objects, that only your feelings are the real ones and that the souls and welfare of others are not just as much your responsibility as it is theirs. And it is exactly that type of attitude that seems so prevalent at times, especially with the current generations of young men. Perhaps they skipped the class where they taught moral decency? Funny, because somehow I doubt they missed the class where they put condoms on cucumbers.

The truth is we do have a responsibility. And although I cannot understand why it appears that this responsibility is something that people aren’t quite grasping. So let me sum it up so that all the people who don’t quite get it can at last understand.

Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.

Bile

I was a watching a man today I wanted to kill. I kept picturing a knife running along the edge of his scalp and down his face, I could see the skin separating and pulling back. I imagined slowly chopping off his fingers with pruning shears. I didn’t know him, he merely irritated me.

How dark have I become?

All thoughts I seem to have lately are negative. Especially those about myself; after fighting to earn self-esteem I am once again back in the red. I hate myself once more, loathing seeps out of my every pore like a thick soup. Why? Why now, why like this, why me, why do I hate as I do?

What is it within me that worms its way back into my mind after I banish it for the umpteenth time, what is it that slowly secretes its way through my neurons and into my heart like a poisonous ooze? It pumps through my veins, heavy like mud and black as tar.

What is its name?

It tells me I have failed, that I am not a hero.

Not a hero.

I haven’t changed the world, I haven’t fixed any wrongs, I haven’t supported my family, saved a man’s life, opened the eyes of the blind, or fought fiercely for what I believe in. I am not a hero.

And that is killing me, slowly but surely it is killing me. Do I dare measure and compare myself to those people? Do I hold myself to their standards? Yes, I do and I don’t know why. And so I am dying on the inside, as this self-hate for my incompetence, my failure supersedes all other emotion. Slowly it taints my mind, turning the world darker around me. Tunnel-vision is setting in, it is only a matter of time before I am focused entirely on my own failings.

So now, desperate, I attempt to extract the poison. Pass me the scalpel.

-M. Powers