Deep Down

At what point does the concept of “deep down” not matter anymore?

I’ve always felt like it’s one of those cards we play once we know we really messed up things with someone and it’s one of those newly created notions that we invented to make up for the guilt we feel and to make us feel better about ourselves and at ease.

When one makes enormous big mistakes continuously, hurts someone else and does not take the initiative to put work into changing to the better instead of always apologizing, the easy idea of saying that no matter what they did, they are a good person deep down seems to be comforting and consoling, they are good no matter and that is all that matters to them, it’s like a happy ending!

It’s true that even when we hurt people, especially those we care about and love and did nothing to harm us, sometimes it could hurt us too. The weight of guilt is not easy, it eats you slowly and painfully because you know that they do not, under any circumstances, deserve what you did or said to them, you can’t sleep nights because you are forced and condemned to remember all the mistakes you made, another day comes and you cannot wake up because again, the weight of guilt is not easy and as a magnet, it attracts you so strongly back to your bed because you’re not ready to live another day with the consequences of your acts and to face the truth about yourself and your gestures. Those feelings are valid, the sadness, the emptiness, the regret and the desolation caused by your guilt about the pain you caused to others are valid, but at some point, that validity expires because being conscious of your mistakes, feeling bad about the things you did and giving an apology and all type of excuses to make others understand your behavior is no longer enough.

“There is nothing deep down inside us, except what we have put there ourselves” Richard Rorty

Repeatedly hurting people who end up ALWAYS forgiving you because you love them or because you had a hard day, or may be because you didn’t know how to handle a situation and in exchange not putting any concrete effort to change your behavior, makes you a successful project of an abuser to be, because you are entering a state of latency and passivity. You are no longer trying to do better, you can’t keep doing awful things and always expect that people will let it go because deep down you are good. You can’t continue abusing people who are attached to you in a way or another, feel bad, use that guilt and play the victim to get them to sympathize with you and seek their forgiveness as a rescue. It’s always easy to blame it on past trauma and mental illnesses and all the issues we have been through but at a certain point it all does not matter. People get fed up with all the “drama” we cause and all the emotional damage we make into their lives and to be fairly honest they are completely, entirely and wholly right about it because at some point not forgiving someone is the best thing we can offer them before they become doomed to be the awful person they are hiding under the mask of “but I am good deep down” and before it’s too late for them. But most importantly, why should we be the ones that got hurt but they are the ones that get to have a closure and feel better, why do their intentions whether the truth about them is good or bad matter more than how we feel and we go as far as to feeling guilty for them, we feel bad about them having that bad day or bad about them having that hard life. We start to seem like the bad guy because we think that our mental health and sanity do matter much more than anything and for not willing to sacrifice them for someone else’s obsession and vicious circle of doing bad things, blaming it on something else and then constantly taking advantage of the idea that they are a good person.

"There’s no deep down. I believe that all we are is what we do."

“You are all the things that are wrong with you. It’s not the alcohol, or the drugs or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career, or when you were a kid. It’s you”

Diane and Todd from Bojack Horseman to Bojack

What if the “deep down I’m good” was just an excuse? What if just like human nature, there’s no good as French philosophers claimed or bad as English philosophers said, what if we are just all the things we do, we are the good beautiful things we do but also all the terrible and atrocious decisions we acted on. I am of course not talking about the few wrong things we did in life and that have, relatively, a light-weight, because who hasn’t and if it were the case or if anyone viewed life this way, what a simple yet very depressing idea… But what I am referring to is when one bad thing leads to another and then to another and then to an infinity of other things until our lives become a series of wrongdoings and thoughts of our actions not having any concrete consequences because we always end up being forgiven.

You cannot be a selfish, narcissistic, egocentric, liar, abuser, cheater, self destructive, manipulative and simply what anyone could and would recall as a bad person and claim that you have good intentions and that you deserve to be granted forgiveness for what you’ve been through such us guilty because you wouldn’t have experienced the bitterness of it if you haven’t put yourself in that position from the first place.

And if it’s hard for you to feel guilty, how hard would it be for people you hurt?

Your cruelty can be justified sometimes depending on your acts and their consequences, but your over cruelty and tyrannical tendencies should not be tolerated and even when justified, you shouldn’t feel like that justification is a card of excuse that allows you to walk on everybody else.

There is no good you and bad you, there’s only you and you are condemned to the consequences of the actions your freedom allows you to make.

On that basis, you have to make amends with yourself and others because no one deserves to be a victim of your toxic behavior, maybe the same way you were a victim once and maybe, you more than anyone else, know that being a victim of abuse is not a great experience.

And in another parallel situation, keep in mind that if people repeatedly do you wrong, you’re doing yourself wrong even more for forgiving their behavior and falling for the “I promise I am a better person”. At some point, the emotional abuse you’re a victim of is no one’s responsibility but yours because continuously forgiving the people who do you wrong, give you empty promises, feed you abstract theoretical images of who they supposedly are and gaslight you into believing that they are another version of what they exposed themselves to be is a colossal mistake you’ll live to regret and one day when you will look back at your past you will feel like you consented to your own abuse.

“A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.” George Raymond Richard Martin

I honestly didn’t know how to end this blog because around the time I wanted to finish it the question of redemption occurred in my mind, so here are some questions I would like you to think of when you have time, there’s no right or wrong answers and maybe there are no answers for them but they’re still questions worth asking: Is there a point in our lives where we’ve made many mistakes that our redemption does not matter? A point where, because of all the damage we caused, our redemption becomes irrelevant? And if the answer is yes, is there a point for us to try and be better? Or does it just not matter anymore? And are there people who are beyond redemption? Beyond saving?