This is a lesson that has taken me a long time to truly learn. To me, if you know there is a problem, then your focus should be fixing it. Knowledge is responsibility. Being informed of an issue should logically lead to efforts to improve. Self-awareness should naturally translate to evaluation and improvement.
It’s been a harsh lesson that not everyone feels the drive to change, to repair what’s broken, to make necessary corrections and adjustments. Not everyone has the desire to be a better person. And what I view as wrong, defective, misaligned — well, that’s exactly the way they actually want to be.
I don’t believe that people lack the ability to change. I believe strongly in personal responsibility, and that your behaviors and your choices are 100% in your hands to direct and steer. But I do believe that some people, like my stalker, are completely missing the ambition, the wish, the drive to be a good person. It’s an ugly defect of their character. Their priority is exclusively themselves, and their actions reflect that. What I view as a problem, they view as right on point.
I see their actions through the lens of normalcy, decency, sanity. They see their own actions through the distorted lens of their personality disorder, their self-centeredness, their toxicity and maladjustment. The two viewpoints will never, ever align. They will always be in conflict. And until recently, that has frustrated me.
I have spent years wondering how the hell someone can be okay with lying, with using their own children, with manipulating others, with being an insufferable asshole and never once trying to be better. I have finally come to the understanding that I have been trying vainly to understand it from my level. That will never work. People like my stalker are so far beneath me that grasping their behavior and choices would require degrading myself to a level I would never sink to, but there is freedom in finally accepting that: she will never change, simply because she doesn’t want to. She sees no issue with her behavior; as long as she gets something out of it, then it is worthwhile, period.
That doesn’t mean I give her or anyone a free pass for shitty behavior. But it does mean I have stopped wondering why, or how she can do that, or even feeling embarrassed for her because she lacks the class and integrity to be embarrassed for herself. The kids, unfortunately, are likely still embarrassed by her, though. But she won’t ever choose better for their sakes, and that is a truth the kids will eventually need to wrestle and accept for themselves, if they wish to avoid the same fate. I hope they do.
Sweat & Sparkle 