horrible is great actually

There’s always a vague inclination to be “a good person” in so far that you could wash your hands when you ever feel accused. Or you could bathe in the fact you at least did right by the entities above, by those around — that you could dig your heels and suggest you did all you could before the world corroded over you indifferently.

But do you know how much more liberating it is to say you’re not a good person? That you may even be a horrible person? After all, “Good person” carries a civic tone, a neighborhoodly reflection, and the “good” turns co-opted for the moral pushers of your world. The rulers, in a way. It is the invocation to whip one into shape about all those around you, and you get your P’s and Q’s and howdy do’s and that’s grand and all, it’s even enjoyable at times, at least the quiet greetings before indifference pervades, but what does it mean for you?

Are you a good person in full? Or what about being good to yourself (even though that’s probably automatic)? It’s easy, in a desperate attempt to scrounge some meaning out of one’s life, to be the sacrificial one. Unload the burden by giving everything, and pass your torch forward for someone else to have an ignite. Maybe to burn Rome. There’s something intoxicating about devoting everything toward someone or some thing as a last ditch while you spiral and kick the beer cans around and disregard the reality of it, the consequences of Rome burning. It’s lovely, honestly.

But it’s another phrase to huff between while you curdle on the couch. Sacrificing yourself for others is the huff compared to living for others. The first is an axe swing into posterity, a final act and a sentencing. The second is an effort each day to make something more of yourself unless you love the insanity of doubling down on some sort of significance you could find in your four walls. It’s the difference between condemning yourself and pushing yourself; the difference between soothing and saying you did all you could against a persistent asking on how could you make things better.

In any case, all of this suspends upon fulfilling that aim of being a good person. That you did right. That your actions had meaning. That you were somebody. And the world’s a better place because you’re here.

But the alternative so much more amusing. To reject being a good person; to be a horrible person, honestly. Scrolling through these sites on here and everyone feels so, how to say, stable about it, and even me at times, and they carry that good grace you just could feel emanate from the church lobby. That we’re here and got some blood markup but in the backdrop we have our black coffee with stale cookie suggesting another entree for the end-of-month potluck. The mask flies off, or on, whatever you prefer, but we’re here and it’s a good tone. We share beers.

But it can be hard to attend. It can be, when you start entertaining how horrible of a person you are. And even now writing this you could feel the table mosey up and bump you for another fill of decaf while you’re nudging elbows and it’s all a joke. But the fact is, in the eyes of being a “good person” and after a critical reflection, it’s more fun to cross the street to the other sidewalk than to endure another conversation, or turn around when you make eyes, or ignore the phone call and text messages, or say you’re busy all the time, and you learn to stay silent and stay scruff. It’s more fun to be as minimally available and incognizant as possible, with a sleep-deprivation and a big laugh and it’s just how it is, and maybe, in some ways, you could feel good acknowledging how horrible you are. It’s addicting.

On occasion one could wonder what it’d be like to be a good person. If it could ever not be suffocating, or delusional. As to devote yourself to being “good” while walking on skeletons seems a challenge and it’s so amorphous and you could peak in the Confucian imperial court investigating with fervor and such seriousness all manners of being good, while you got the frog farmer laughing and he’s wonderful.

He really is, and he never would ever suggest anything about being good. He’d show you how to farm frogs.