Acting Out [Student/Teacher, GxG]

The Same Mistakes (Claire)

The fourth step of Narcotics Anonymous, repeated at each meeting — 'We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves'. 

Claire had been a model student in the NA program years ago, spending hours at meetings and reading the Blue Book in it's entirety more times than she could count. It wasn't until her second year that she actually started to collect chips for her sobriety because the one thing Claire wasn't very good at, arguably the most essential skill for recovery, was impulse control. Her therapist had told her that this likely stemmed from a behavioural condition referred to as Abandoned Child Syndrome, wherein one's development and worldview are impacted by a pattern of loss, abuse, or neglect in their fundamental years. When left unaddressed, this often lead to problems with fear, toxic shame, anger, and addictions later in life. It made sense on paper, as most things did, but when it came to dealing with it... well, that was another story.

It had taken her nearly four years to complete all twelve steps of the program, but she'd gotten through it, coming out on the other side and putting the past behind her as much as anyone could. As she thought back, the fourth step had been the hardest. Morals, as defined in the program, were simply the principals that we choose to live by. Whether we're aware of them or not, when we feel guilt, we've often compromised our morals. Claire had never thought about morality in the past, choosing instead to focus on survival. The right thing to do would always be the thing that would keep her ahead and keep her in a position to provide for her family. 'Right' was success, and 'wrong' was failure. It was only when she started to analyze the things she considered mistakes that she realized that it wasn't as simple as she'd originally thought; the greatest causes of shame in her life weren't the times she'd failed, but the times she'd hurt people and let them down when they needed her.

Admitting that you've made mistakes was a lot easier than tallying them up and trying to build a functioning moral compass from the pieces left behind. Since then, she'd formed a more-or-less clear idea of right and wrong that had nothing to do with her career, and everything to do with the way she interacted with the world around her. Sure, she didn't always follow it to a T, but on principle she always tried to choose the path that would cause the least harm. It was the way she'd learned to keep her conscience clear, and as the years went on, the guilt that had once crippled her was put on the back-burner. 

She went the extra mile to help people when they needed it, and though she'd never let herself be treated like a doormat, she worked hard to differentiate between necessary conflicts and her own learned instinct to provoke others. She discovered in therapy that the combative, rebellious streak she'd chalked up to a part of her nature as an adolescent was nothing more than misdirected anger, and as she worked through it, she noticed herself becoming more forgiving. More graceful, and more prepared to deal with the world with a clear head and an generous heart. 

It was for this reason that she was currently laying on her couch in the previous night's pyjamas mentally berating herself for going against everything she believed in. She remembered herself at eighteen — so strong-willed and stubbornly sure that she knew everything about the world and the people in it. 

In reality, her bleak view of humanity could be summed up in three neat points. Point one: people are cruel at heart, if I let them, they will hurt me. Point two: romantic love is an illusion fuelled by brain chemistry and endorsed by society to enforce conformity; people believe in love because they're afraid of being alone. I am not afraid, because I have always been alone. This tied in nicely with point three: loneliness is unavoidable, and happiness is a childish delusion. Nina deserves to be happy; if I can keep her happy for a little while longer, that's enough. 

It didn't take a genius to know that her mindset was seriously skewed, but if you'd told her that at the time, she would've rolled her eyes. To her, you were just another person blinded by a fantasy.