I was reading an article that a man wrote about how horrible his marriage had been. He was gay and Christian. He was also married to a woman. They were miserable and fought a lot. They wanted to divorce, but felt that wasn't a viable option because they had two daughters and viewed it as against their religious beliefs.
The article was about the pain of being trapped, or rather, feeling as if you are trapped. This man felt trapped by his conflicting ideas about sexuality, but even more so, he felt trapped by the view that divorce isn't an option. He was miserable. She was miserable. Every day, they both woke up to the reality that they had made a mistake and felt there was no way out of it.
At one point in the article, to illustrate how desperate he had become, he confessed to praying that God would kill her, so that he could be free again. His point in making this confession was to show how twisted the idea of never divorcing had made him. He would rather his wife die than have to face the 'failure and sin' of divorcing her.
To me, this confession was important. It showed how warped a sense of morality can become when morality is set to a rigid standard. Truthfully, when you reach the point where you wish someone was dead in order to get them out of your life, you should walk away from them. There is no love between you and no good will. He knew this. And as he was writing the article (some 12 years and a divorce after feeling this way), he knew praying that she died was wrong. He also knew that is probably something that happens quite often when people feel trapped in their situation.
In the comments, however, a lot of people attacked him for wishing she was dead. They were appalled that he could feel this way. It was one point people kept coming back to, about how awful it was that someone could have these kinds of thoughts.
I think they kind of missed the point that the author himself was equally appalled that he felt this way. It disturbed him that his mind had gone to this place and he spoke of it, not as a way to justify how he felt or to excuse it, but in order to demonstrate how distorted his views had been. He was saying, "Hey, this 'til death do us part' thing is absolute torture for some of us. However, it's become such a rigid part of our religion and identity that we'd rather people die than us find some kind of civil way to part company."
Increasingly, our culture has a lot of blogs in it. Many of us read blogposts every day. Many of these are written by people who are not professionals. And many of them are written as a kind of confessional. My blog certainly is from time to time. I think it's important to remember that. This isn't journalism. This isn't impartial and professional.
To me, one of the more fascinating things about this kind of personal narrative is that often you can find a deeper level of honesty in it than you will in other types of writing. Sometimes that personal narrative is far from pretty. People use their blogs to talk about their fears and dreams. They discuss their medical procedures. They indulge for days about whatever has struck their fancy. And sometimes, they confess to their darker thoughts. I say thoughts here because thoughts are still in our heads. We can think a lot of awful things and never act on them because we know they're wrong. Even still, just the thoughts can cause us to feel pretty awful.
Confession is a very healing thing. And yes, whatever you confess to online, you are putting out there for people to judge and hold against you. I know that often when I read stuff that I don't like, I also hold it against the people who wrote it.
Sometimes though, when I'm being a bit more reflective, I can see that their confessions aren't about bragging. Usually these confessions are about pain or just a total sense of loathing that they feel after they've done whatever they've just confessed to doing. There is also usually a chain of things (events, beliefs, people) that are part of what caused them to think the dark things they've confessed. Like the author I used as an example, often the process of breaking that chain (walking away from the situation, changing how you feel, removing people from your life) is enough to stop the darkness.
We have an outdoor cat who spent most of the evening trying to get Tinkerbell's attention and she ignored him. Later that night, I caught Tink playing by herself and whining because she was lonely. One would think the solution would be to warm up to the outdoor cat, but with cats (and people), it's never that easy. Sometimes I think the people on the internet are a lot like this. It's just a vast collection of lonely people who keep crying out for someone to notice them and then being hostile when someone does. That's very sad. Perhaps it's another chain we should break.
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