Would I Commit Murder?

Whoa, whoa. I know this is a weird way to start a piece of writing.

Would I commit murder?

Whoa, whoa. I know this is a weird way to start a piece of writing.

PSA to any CIA agent who’ll ever read this: no, this is not some clue I’ve left for interpretation. I don’t have a secret manifesto stashed somewhere. But yeah, I always wonder if I would commit murder.

More recently, actually, I’ve wondered about it more than usual.

You see, I’m an architect- of castles in the air, that is. If I could liquidate my real estate in dreamland, I’d take Elon Musk out of the game.

I watch a lot of films. All genres. Romance, rom-coms (especially the amigo-to-lovers trope), crime, period dramas, sitcoms, sci-fi, fiction, action, psychological horrors and thrillers; oh, I love horrors. And I know it’s weird to say this while also having started this piece the way I did. But I promise I’m not a psychopath. Or at least, most times I hope I’m not. But I like psychological horrors because I get insiders of the human minds and it’s... Let’s just say , quite intriguing.

I do have certain tendencies, though. The kind that make me pause and ask, hmm, what exactly am I? But after some thought, I think those tendencies lean more toward autism than they do psychopathtry. (A word I may or may not have just invented.)

But seriously, what am I? A question I may never fully answer.

Do you know what makes up a psychopath, dear reader? There are so many factors. The classic nature vs. nurture debate. You’ll hear in documentaries that the parents were amazing people, yet their kid still turned out the way they did. Well, that’s their nature then. Some people are just born knowing their purpose in life is to commit hideous crimes. And honestly? Lucky them. Most of us are out here flailing through existence, but they came pre-packaged with a mission.

Mmh, okay.

So, would I murder somebody?

I like to think I have rage sometimes. Do I have it under control? Well, if I had it under control, then I wouldn’t be writing this, would I?

People underestimate how extreme a human being can go: both in the good ways and the bad. We love to pretend. We lie to ourselves.

Ask Stephanie. She’s a good person. Ask Dave. He’s a good person. Ask Phoebe, she’s so good that people take her for granted, and she’s vowed never to let that happen again. I mean, come on. Is it really that bad to admit you’re not a good person?

If you ask me, this whole “I’m a good person” charade is exactly the kind of thing that could turn someone into a psychopath.

Nurture.

There’s what you tell yourself, and then there’s what the external world sees, which may be very different. And sometimes? It’s not pretty.

If I told you to your face that you’re a bitch, you wouldn’t like it. Sorry, but not sorry. It’s the truth.

So, would I murder someone?

I like to think of my rage as overboiled energy. I try to sit with it, nurse it, but it overwhelms. It’s the Aries Lilith in me.

Do you know what I mean? Have you ever been so angry?

The way the world works, we treat negative emotions like a plague. We shove them down and slap a bandage on, hoping it holds.

But anger management has nothing on my rage when I try to pretend it’s not there.

Actually, suppressing it makes me want to hurt myself. And others.

It makes me want to lash out.

And, if I’m being honest? It feels good when I do that.

Years of suppressed rage don’t just go away.

Listen.

When I was a teenager, my father once told me he hated the lipstick I wore. It was purple. The first lipstick I ever wore. I kinda liked it.

I don’t remember much about the traumatic years of my childhood and teenagehood, but that? That, I cannot dare forget.

He said I looked ugly in it. Told me to remove it. Said it in front of his employee at the time.

I think I felt embarrassed. I felt ugly. In fact, I thought purple made me look like a crow, so I wiped it off.

I cried.

Then he came and told me he didn’t want to hear me crying, or he’d beat me.

Now, I don’t know why the man treated me so cruelly in the first place. But I stopped crying. I swallowed the words I wanted to say. The ones that burned my tongue.

He stopped my release from happening.

We do that a lot. We stop releases from happening.

We weren’t taught emotional regulation because we weren’t even allowed to express emotions in the first place.

So tell me, do you think nurtured psychopaths exist because of unexpressed rage?

We have so much pent-up rage.

This is why you’ll accidentally bump into someone on the street, and they’ll curse you out like you just insulted their entire bloodline. They’re not mad at you. No. It’s probably their neighbor who keeps blasting loud music. But they can’t express that rage, so it spills over.

Would you commit murder?

Maybe.

We all could.

If we were angry enough.

Do you know how powerful anger is?

By extension, have you met rage?

Rage has such a beautiful name for such a hazardous emotion.

We hear it all the time.

In another world, road rage would mean taking a long road trip while singing songs you love loudly. But in this universe?

It doesn’t mean exactly that.

Would I murder someone?

I’ve thought about murder.

No, not in that way.

I’ve thought about what could make me want to murder someone.

And every single time, it leads back to suppressed rage.

I don’t think I’m exactly a good person.

I think I’m a person who does both good and bad things. I am polar.

And you know what? That’s okay.

Me admitting this helps me stop demonizing negative emotions. If I can express them regularly, regulate them, it means I won’t have to suppress them.

Because you’d hate to murder someone over rage that you’ve been hoarding for years.

I like anger.

It’s big. It’s powerful. And if you channel it well, you can turn it into something else, something useful.

But treating it like garbage? That’s step one to letting it own you.

You’ll be so angry you’ll self-harm. You’ll hurt others.

No, you’re not a psychopath.

You’re just suppressing so much that it’s taking over you.

So...

Would I murder someone?

Would you murder someone?

Cover photo for pinterest. com

LETTERS BY JOY.