Catharsis [Novel]

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

            Growing up as a young girl and listening to the bedtime stories my father would tell me, I always thought it was easy to tell the difference between good and evil in the world.  The good guys wore white or had "prince" in their name or saved princesses from the clutches of dragons or at the very least you were happy with the choices they made at the end of the story.  Bad guys were simple and evil and driven by greed or lust or the maniacal need to lock young women in towers with fire-breathing reptiles.  When my father read those books to me, it was easy to know which side was which, and I always knew which side I would be on when I grew up.

            But then you get older and you realize the world isn't divided into black and white or good and evil.  Everything is a shade of something in-between.  No person is purely good or completely evil.  We all have sins and poor choices that we want to keep hidden or a redeeming quality that makes those around us consider us a good friend when no one else will.  In real life we don't have evil wizards putting people in dungeons or princes that ride the countryside looking for good deeds to perform.  We have teachers that inspire us or big name chemical companies that wantonly pollute the earth.  But that chemical company also helps create drugs that save kids with cancer, and that teacher might be worried his past life and arrests will come back to haunt him.

            Every villain is the hero of their own story.  No living person does evil acts for the sole purpose of enjoyment.  It’s not part of human nature.  We rationalize what we do so that our actions make sense in our head.  The chemical company executive tells himself that pollution is a necessary byproduct of being able to keep the drug costs down.  The teacher convinces himself he doesn't need to tell his employers about his previous arrests because it shouldn't affect how he teaches kids now.   Their actions may be wrong and may even qualify as "evil" in a spectator's eyes, but that is not their intention.

            Standing in Mr. Black's bedroom, I realized I no longer knew who the good guy was in my own story any more.   I was no longer the hero going out to slay a monster in its lair at night.  I was an assassin planning on murdering a man while he slept.  Maybe this man did deserve to die because of how he earned his money, but he wasn't doing it to ruin the world.  He was doing it to provide for his family.  He was the hero in that house, and from now on I will be their monster.

            That is a decision I must learn to live with, and it is a decision that I will spend the rest of my days rectifying.