I wonder how long it will be before I kill someone.
Someone may die under my hands. The thought fills me
with appropriate horror. I feel like a gothic child of
Victorian morals and of the mystery of the human mind,
a child of dead wishes.
Ours is, in theory, one of the most scientific judicial systems in
the world. Phenomena that seem connected, things
that really happen, seem unexplainable, easily manipulated,
under objective scrutiny. Logical choices, cool heads
require a degree of uninvolvement that I don't have
under circumstances of great duress.
What is this life I lead? Who is this horrible figure, my
brother, with whom I have a tempestuous hate/love
relationship? Is he the same child tortured by trauma
given an easily aggravated temper? Is there a medicine
to calm him down? Is he going to snap someday?
He is not the only one born with hot blood. I am evil.
In the fist of anger balling itself at the end of my
numb, thinkless arm, there is power. I do not react
to reason, and pictures of the moment of collision,
fist to his jaw, knee to his teeth, come by
in imagination so vivid that I physically recoil from impact.
On any given day, I don't think like that.
Perhaps a few times a year, I am angry enough to spit
on my upbringing, on my own nature, to become so blinded.
As long as I keep control of those impulses, I'm fine.
Reason holds emotion in check in a battered, but trustworthy, cage.
Imagine the legal nightmare if it breaks.