If there is no other good thing to be said about me, and it's possible that there isn't based upon the large amount of people who vehemently dislike me, then it is this. I am well aware of my shortcomings.
My ego walks through a door ten minutes before I do, at least when it comes to my intelligence.
I am so bad at social interaction that I can't even tell anymore when I'm being rude or overly sarcastic. I don't care about people. "Oh, you and so-and-so are about to have your one month anniversary? That information is absolutely meaningless to me and I have no idea how you would like me to respond."
I have a hard time faking conviviality beyond my limited repertoire of scripted and rehearsed subjects of small talk.
I am utterly lacking in tact, and terrible at lying to make up for it. I can't even manage the harmless white lies that polite society runs on.
I am argumentative, and hard headed, and I reach compromises only with the begrudging contempt usually only seen in small children.
I am not now, and have never been, a nice person.
Nor do I really aim to be. There is a difference between being nice and being good, but that is a conversation for some other day.
Despite all these things, I consider myself to have one other good quality. I have an almost obsessive need to admit when I have done wrong, even when it is to my own detriment. I believe very ardently in personal responsibility.
Every choice that I have made, whether good or bad, has been completely my own. There is no evil twin, or devil on my shoulder that urges me to do some of the shitty things that I do. The me of the past is the me that sits here today. I am still violent and capricious. I am still manipulative and scornful. The only difference between then and now is that I control these parts of myself better now than I did then.
There isn't a secret piece of me that is benevolent and virtuous, kept locked away by the darker aspects of myself. I am the sum of all of my actions, and I cannot discount the bad ones in order to make a better overall picture. Even when my decisions have been born of opposition, being justified isn't the same thing as being right. Good intentions are not magic spells, absolving you of the consequences of your misdeeds.
I was responsible for those decisions then, I am responsible for them now, and I will be responsible for them until the day that I die. If I was drunk when I did something terrible, I still did something terrible. If I lashed out because of systematic abuse or antagonism, I still did something terrible. If I manipulated a situation in order to meet my own ends at the expense of other people, I still did something terrible.
My 'recovery', so to speak, is based upon looking at myself in the mirror every day and weighing my soul against a feather, metaphorically speaking. I look at my actions and I ask myself if the person that I want to be would do the things that I do.
I've come a long way. A lot of the time, the answer to that question is yes, and I get to feel the satisfaction of living up to my own standards, one of the best feelings in the world.
However, there are those times when the answer is no. I don't know what law of the universe dictates that the weight of mistakes is thrice that of any satisfaction, but there are a few failures haunting me currently, staring at me from the mirror and waiting to be properly addressed. I have apologies to make that I don't think I have the stomach for, and I feel that they will be seen as yet another wrongdoing when I do get around to them.
I'm having a hard time with my reflection at the moment. I see the strides that I have taken and my continuing progress, but still I don't know if I like who I'm looking at right now.
I guess I can add another bullet point to my list of shortcomings.
Extremely melodramatic.
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