Due to an extreme lack of time imagination, this week's topic is of your own choosing.... feel free to let your own ideas flow. Be creative and have fun with it!

True evil may lie more in ignorance than in suspicion

I was watching The Outer Limits this morning. I love watching it because it was shot in Vancouver and I get heartsick over any show/movie shot there; I sometimes catch a glimpse of myself in the background of older episodes. Anyway, it was near the end of this episode where the narrator spews these words out and I found them quite profound. Think about the witch hunts, the anti-communism, all sorts of prejudice, the end-of-the-world theories that spill out into ears hungry for gossip or explanations to the mysterious, confusing and baffling.

I'm haunted by events in my past, mostly because when I tried to explain myself or clarify myself to someone, they couldn't relate. Their ignorance blocked them from knowing what I'm talking about. Trying to explain to my best friend my sexuality was frustrating because she believed in stereotypes and misinformation about it. Out of her ignorance, she'd send me offensive emails about homosexuality, sending me letters about how being violated in my childhood and several years ago "made" me this way; she was clueless about how harmful she was to me, even denying it. The biggest thing though, was when she'd constantly say, "But why didn't you tell me?" She acted like I didn't trust her, like I purposely kept this from her when over and over again, I explained that I had to come out to myself before I could come out to anyone in general; It was with me all along only I was too ignorant about it myself. There was no way of talking about something I knew nothing about. I believed in the stereotypes and the horrible things said about gays and lesbians because I didn't fit them, therefore I couldn't be one. No matter how often I told her or tried to explain where I was coming from, her ignorance couldn't comprehend this. Her ignorance about the whole thing was too aggravating and I couldn't bare to listen to her injurious words said to me.

I haven't talked to her since the winter of '02.

I hate when people talk about victims of sexual assault like it's something sexual and erotic, completely ignorant of the violent side. It's ignorance like that that provokes them to say the most offensive and idiotic things. Ruins my day when I hear crap like that. The perpetrator didn't think he fit any profile of what a rapist is, therefore he believed he couldn't have done it, along with my frienemies. They looked through their rapist goggles and saw he didn't line up with what was being seen, therefore felt he was a decent person. It's like they wanted to see a neon sign saying, rapist on his forehead for them to fully understand that he did such a thing. Everyone's ignorance shielded them from the harsh reality of it, while I was haunted by its ugliness.

It's one thing to suspect someone of evil, it's another when their evil intent is strictly out of ignorance, because they don't realize how dangerous they truly are. They justify their acts and hold fast to them, unaware of how horrible they're being. Time finally catches up to them and they bury themselves deeper in denial and transgress through the five stages of grief, or a lightning-bolt effect of realization hits them with knowledge.

Am I making any sense? I read this back and I think that only I can make sense of this based on what I've been through in my life, but sometimes I explain things and people twist my words to mean something entirely.

I think of the things I've done to people and realized I didn't know what I was really doing at the time. I look back on those episodes and wonder how I didn't see it for what it was. I was clouded in ignorance, and the recipient could see it clearly. I stood in a fog while they stood in the cold harsh wind.