Carry a Flashlight

I understand the seeds that hold the potential to spawn abuses. It can begin as a slight frustration, possibly stemmed from a sense of lack of control over someone or something. Resentment makes itself comfortable. Mental loathing acts like cogs in your mind. Always running, self perpetuating, polluting thoughts. It won't take much to push you over the edge. A normal, nothing-out-of-the-usual, incident releases the impulse to lash out physically and inflict pain onto the source of which you recognize as the epicenter to your pain. Sometimes we'll do anything to regain a semblance of control, fear based albeit.

I used to think there was something wrong with me because I had dark, horrifying thoughts. And it conflicted with my good nature, creating confusion and doubt in myself and who I thought I was. Luckily science has taught me about the amygdala, which controls our impulses to feed, fornicate, flee, and fight. And gratefully we have our prefrontal cortex, which allows us to analyze the situation. So I choose not to kick the dog for eating shit off the ground for the hundredth time this week, even though I tell her not to in ways I know she understands. I breathe and tell myself, "She's a dog. It's what she does.".

I have considered several alternative explanations to the darkness in me. Perhaps some sort of abuse occurred in my developmental years, during childhood amnesia. The mind has no retrievable memories, but there are sensible imprints, and the circuitry of the brain was influenced. I feel as if I've been infected. Inflicted with a faceless burden. And this is something I'm learning to overcome. Dark thoughts are not indicative of malicious behavior, and it doesn't mean you're a bad person.  This is what I have learned for myself at least.

I have darkness in me, but I carry a flashlight.