This is going to be another of hopefully many posts where I just look at myself. I say another, because it’s a process I’ve begun and need to continue. I say hopefully because I seem to do it more after bad things from my past come back to hit me in the head with a shovel, and less so after the instance has been remedied. I say many because each time I look down the road to recovery, it looks like a longer trip than a shorter one.

Note: some of what I come up with gives me the immediate desire for an adjunct post. I will note that and try to get to the post as soon as I can. I hope that I will not delay or lose it in the shuffle of available time. I will also try to remember to mark the original with a link to the post when I get to it.


I have been a bad person.

Such a simple statement. So much weight behind it. There always is when using simple terms that linked together are open to so much interpretation and vagueness.

Of course…the question is what makes a bad person?

I have continually committed one of the great sins of Dante’s Inferno. (At least I think I remember it being as such, I am offline and can’t verify) I have been a deceiver. I figure if there is something that you have done that you consider a sin, then during that time you were a bad person.

Hmmn, no. It sounded good until it was ‘symbolicly’ on paper. That’s not it. Who knows…with luck and logic I might prove myself wrong. I might prove my statement right.

There are people who have made grievous errors and repented for them. And I’m not sure if repented is the right word. I don’t like using terms that come from any religion because these words all have too many definitions and too many people see their definition as the only one acceptable to satisfy the accomplishment of the word in question.

I must make a post on that. I think there is greater truth in that realization.

But the long and short is, for one to truly get beyond their past they have to do 2 things
1) Make the solid effort not to do what they’ve done in the past
2) Make up for the effects of doing something wrong as best as they are afforded.

Now, like my comment above…. 1 sounds easier than it is. Okay, if the thing you’ve done in the past is “Kill someone” it is easy to aspire not to kill someone again. (Actually, I have an unposted journal entry called ‘murder is only difficult the first time) However, it is far harder to realize what brought you to the point of killing someone and not making a solid effort not to do that again.

Back to being a bad person through being a deceiver. I was the worst kind of deceiver… I wasn’t just deceiving others, I was doing it to myself. And for me…I run the daily fear that I’m still doing it.

I’ve chosen the word deceiver; because ‘liar’ is (in my mind) a small subset of deceiver. Liar suggests one who ‘tells lies’. And it is far more dangerous to deceive through truth than true lies.

One deception that I lived with was that I was deceiving altruistically. It was better for people around me if i let them believe half truths because the real truth would upset them. Deception is done for one and only one reason. Personal gain. As much as I could believe I was doing it for other’s sake; it was to keep the fall-out of the truth from having to be dealt with by me. This doesn’t necessarily mean the truth was my fault, or my job to fix. It just means that the situation of the truth would cause more pain and aggravation…And it was far easier to ‘spin’ the situation so that I was spared the pain and aggravation.

Whatever you call it; they were deceptions. And thus, I can only call myself a deceiver. So, to try to get through number 1 above….I look at most of my actions with a very detailed microscope.

I have to. There are some that would believe that this is going too far. Over compensating. Personally, I feel I must disagree.

I had a wonderful conversation about addiction and obsession. We were trying to hash out the differences and the definition.

I have found my definition of addiction.
Addiction is the relying use of some ‘thing’ called Xto make some other ‘thing’ called Y to ‘go away’. It doesn’t fix Y, and it doesn’t give any positive results. Further, it probably in the long run makes Y worse and probably adds other new and different Ys in the process. Finally, it is an addiction if any use of ‘X’ causes reliance to return.

This is my definition. It is open to debate in another post.

I was addicted to deception. It gave me an excuse not to deal with situations. Even if dealing with the situation was to stand up and state the truth, “This is your fault”

Yes, it was easier for me to see a problem caused by someone else and do as much as I could to hide the true situation that resulted than to deal with the true fall out. Thus, make the situation worse when it might have actually been salvaged.

Granted, in any addiction. One use begets other uses. Once you’ve made one bad choice, it’s so much easier just to cover it with another one and another. The roller coaster is so much easier when you have little X to cover.

There is a far deeper problem that I must find. What prompted me to cover the first situation. Why do/did I find it necessary to take the brunt rather than deal with the truth? I am switching from past to present; not because I want to feel like I’m still just a liar. I’m doing it because until I find my answers, I must consider myself not ‘healed’ not beyond some of the problems…and ever on guard against the addicted side of myself.

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