The Nature of Good and Bad

What you see posted here is a picture I took with a cell phone about four years ago. This picture tells a story of the complicated nature of good and bad. Until now many of you have seen the world in rather absolute terms, very black and white. That’s why Fridge left you so confused. The story tied to this picture is just as bittersweet, is just as grueling, and it will leave you just as confused. But I promise you, there won’t be any swearing involved. There doesn’t need to be, not this time.

If you go to the right and click on my name you will be taken to all of my posts. My original introduction post mentions a time of depression and self-loathing that left me an altered person. It was these tree people in the picture that helped put me back together.

The guy in the foreground of the picture is named Kyle. He’s the one holding the harmonica. Kyle was musically talented, playing a number of instruments. He was specifically good at drums and guitar. He had father issues. His dad had hit the bricks on him fairly early. They kept a line of communication but it wasn’t that strong. Kyle once showed me a junk car he, on more than one occasion, had taken a baseball bat to because of his father. Kyle was the first to actually start talking to me. He did so because he found me interesting. By that point I looked like a holocaust survivor. So this kid started tagging along with me as I aimlessly wandered our hometown. He even took an interest in my art. Kyle was always full of fun little facts and tidbits. He really was a good kid, despite the demons he carried with him.

The girl in the middle is Cassie, and at that time she was Kyle’s girlfriend. The two of them were in that puppy dog kind of love that makes outsiders looking in want to barf. It was just too cute to stomach. Cassie was one of those girls that are just always bright and warm like the sun. She’d make you think of puppies, warm cookies, and all that jazz. She was living with her grandma at that time. She had parents but the constant back and forth of them battling over her had just culminated with Cassie saying to hell with it and moving in with grandma. Cassie was very nurturing and sweet. She was also, however, a party girl. She loved going out and having a good time. She liked smoking, drinking, and getting high. She loved being with her friends and throwing caution to the side, and if the mood struck her she was not afraid to pull up her shirt and flash someone. Now, I can already hear the moral judgments brewing up out of your mind, but keep in mind that Cassie is still a good person. Keep in mind that she helped rebuild a broken boy.

The guy highest up and in the background is Tommy. He is by far the most important part of this story. Tommy was damaged. I’m not saying that in a judgmental way, I’m just saying he had issues. Tommy, from time to time, could be a pill. He was a pathological liar. He’d drum up stories that everyone knew, I think Tommy even knew everyone knew, where lies. But it was okay because, despite any flaws he may have had, he was still just a sweat kid with wounds that hadn’t healed. If there was one person who would commiserate with you, it was Tommy. And you know what, I’m sure if there was a fight he’d be right there backing you up. He was also very good with children. Tommy had a few people trying to help him, the pastor of one of our churches being one of them. I actually went with them and Tommy to go paint-balling once. It was fun. You could hate Tommy sometimes, but not all of the time. A growing theme in this particular entry seems to be parental neglect. Not, “Oh, they let that boy watch naughty movies,” but neglect as in the absence of. Tommy’s parents were divorced; it was a real nasty divorce by all accounts. Both his parents had mental issues and needed help. Tommy bounced between living with his father and sister. Since Tommy always felt the need to lie it was hard to tell what of his past was real. The one story that was confirmed for me was the story of how his dad ended up going to a mental institution for a spell. Tommy was lying on the couch one day in nothing but his boxers. He hears a noise behind him, and as he turns his head he sees his dad standing there with a shotgun pointed at him. His dad then begins to ramble about how terrible the world is and he’s going to protect the both of them from it. His dad was going to blow his head off. What happened next? His dad looks down and says, “Oh, I forgot the shells in the kitchen. Hold on.” As his dad lumbered to the kitchen Tommy grabbed the cordless phone and ran out the door. I want you to imagine this kid running down the street in nothing but his boxers screaming into a phone to his sister, “Dad’s gone crazy! Dad’s gone crazy!” Like I said, you could hate Tommy but not all the time.

Years have passed since this picture was taken. Here’s what I know now.

Kyle is the one out of the three I still talk to. Kyle and Cassie’s relationship fell apart, as with what happens to most young loves. Kyle was preparing to be a daddy, but that didn’t happen. I’ll get more into that soon. Kyle still plays his music, but not professionally. He works whatever jobs he can get, mostly factory and farm stuff. Kyle recently got into trouble with a few people. You see, Kyle likes porn. It’s strange; he doesn’t care what kind of porn it is either. Anybody could be doing anybody, or anything, and he'd still watch it. He just likes looking at it. That’s not the problem. What you look at is your own business and if he could find some beauty in it, good for him. What the problem was is that he couldn’t control himself on other people’s computers. More than one person has told him they’ve checked the history after he’s been on their computer and found some of the strangest stuff. He also got into a friends cell phone and found a naked picture of them, which he sent to himself. He forgot to delete it from the sent folder. All that’s really minor stuff though. I just don’t lend him my computer. He is still a good guy, but sometimes I worry that this hard world will beat the good out of him.

Cassie got pregnant. She and Kyle’s relationship had fallen apart by this point so it was hard on the both of them. She decided she couldn’t handle it so she went to get an abortion. However, the doctor told her that he couldn’t do it. It may have been something about her ovarian walls being too thin. The doctor said that if he did it she might not be able to ever have a kid again, and in turn she may sue him later down the road if she changed her mind. He wasn’t going to have that, so she was stuck with having the kid. Kyle did his best to get through it, a hard task when you’re always fighting and just want to get away from each other. Just before the kid was born a DNA test showed that Kyle wasn’t the father at all. Some of you may be pointing at her party girl ways as the source of her problems, but correlation and causation are two different things. Many of you may not yet understand the complicated dynamics of love. Sometimes, when things go bad, the love you have for someone can be flipped on its head. When you let yourself feel something so deeply, love and hate start mixing with each other. You’ll find that you’ll hurt yourself in order to get at this person who, for as passionately as you hate them, you still love them. It’s confusing. Again, don’t judge. Cassie is still the sunshine she was before. She’s just had to live in the real world and it has taken its toll.

Tommy stuck around town for a few years and then joined the army. The belief was that the rigid structure would help him deal with some of his issues. I didn’t hear anything else about him until my mom sent me an internet article. Seems while on leave Tommy returned to our hometown. His second day there he was arrested for child molestation. He had done things with a two year old girl. I don’t think Tommy is in jail anymore, though he’s not welcome back home. I don’t know when his trial is or was for that matter.

I don’t know what to think about this. Thinking about it now turns my insides into a hurricane of hate and disgust. I think to myself, “Why did his dad have to forget the shells?” I think to myself, “What would I do if I could travel back in time?” I think to myself, “What if he does it again?” But it’s Tommy! He was that kid who happy to be unhappy with you! I’ll call him names; I’ll call him an entire list of names. I might even make up some new names to call him. What I can’t bring myself to do is call him evil. I can’t do that because I know what brought him to this point. So I try to make sense of these thoughts, like they’re a lump of clay that I’m pounding on hoping some form of structure appears. That structure won’t ever appear though. So my best bet is just to put it away unfinished, not to lose myself to it. It is what it is, and I have to leave it alone.

I don’t have any answers past this point. I just have a picture, and pictures are silent.