Drifting in the Space of Ramblings

Ramblings About Guilt

Guilt is like a concrete wall we carry on our backs, carefully balancing the constant weight that tends to try to knock us down at every moment.

Is guilt something we create in our heads? Does it exist? Can we be guilty for following our instincts and being true to something inside us, even knowing it is wrong? Should we feel guilty only for what we do to others? And what about what we do to ourselves?

Guilt is one of the most abstract feelings that surround human history. I have never been able to understand it, why we feel such a thing, but it has been present in every moment of my life since I can remember.

I feel guilty for the world's hunger, for people who are forced to give up their dreams for survival, I am guilty for the premature death of John Lennon and for entire wars around the world. It's a strange complex that I feel. A psychologist once told me that I am an empath, that I can feel too much of what the people around me feel. I can easily put myself in the other person's place. If a madman enters and shoots in a kindergarten, I can feel the suffering of the families of the dead children as if they were my sons and daughters. I can lie in bed for days thinking as if it were my finger on all the triggers and as if it were my greed that prevents children from eating in Africa. I feel part of a society corrupted from its beginnings because of my guilt.

It's as if God did everything to teach me a lesson. For me and no one else. Then I feel guilty for feeling so important, and the dice are rolled.

And when everything seems lost, the peak of paranoia comes where I believe that, in fact, I am God, that I have the power to prevent all the bad things in the world and, in truth, I don't lift a finger.

"But I don't know how to stop this," I try to tell myself. "But I have the power to do it!"

I would like to apologize to all the people who lived with me, but for some, I don't even know why I would like to apologize, I just would.

"I'm sorry, my son," I say to the aborted child who was never born. "I'm sorry for killing you. Soon we will be together, and you can scream at me for the life I took from you. When I said I didn't want to see your mother's face for the rest of my life, it was a lie, I was just afraid. Lucky for her she distanced herself. I killed you, and only I must carry this guilt."

In mythology, Jason never managed to take revenge on Medea, who murdered their children to avenge the beloved who left her for another. Perhaps he didn't take revenge due to the guilt he felt for abandoning a woman who had done so much for him. I was the negligent Jason and the murderous Medea. I am both at the same time.

"I didn't even take my son's body; I didn't take him with me to be buried. And for myself, who did all this harm, I prophesy a final curse. I will die in space... Alone."