Collection of Thoughts – Am I Good or Bad? (neither) # 1

             August 25, 2020

              September 30, 2020

 

            I’ve killed. 

            It was a late night and I got up from bed to get some water. As I walked in the moonlit kitchen, a movement to my left caught my eye. I immediately turned the light on and saw it, scurrying under the kitchen table. I grabbed my flipflop and in a swift gesture I smacked it while letting out a warrior yell.

            The roach got smashed to smithereens on the sole of my flipflop. I used an old newspaper to scrape it off into the garbage can. I cleaned the surfaces it had touched, washed my hands, and went back to bed. With the whole action, I had forgotten all about the water.

            As I got back in bed, my husband asked, “Did you kill the roach?”

            “Yes!” I replied.

            Then I heard a “humph” from him. The silence weighed between us. On an angry impulse I asked, “What?”

            “Well, I am of the thought: live and let live,” he said.

            “Oh, wow! Since when did that apply to roaches? Should I have just let it be around the house and eat our food?” I asked sarcastically.

            “Well, no, but we can try to just put them outside and let them live instead. Roaches are also God’s creatures,” he said in his holier-than-thou tone.

            “And who is going to do that? You?” I inquired.

            “Sure!” he said as if truly meaning it. But I knew better.

            The conversation ended. 

             Ridden with guilt, as any recovering Catholic would, I immediately started praying and apologizing for the kill. I was not so much praying in a formal sense, but I was having a conversation with the Almighty. In my conversation, I kept trying to explain to God why I did not want the roach in the house, especially in the kitchen, while I continued to apologize for killing a living being. 

            I kept having this profound conversation, in my head, with the spirits of the world, while my thoughts floated from anger to guilt to sorrow. Had I been raised a Native American, would I have killed the roach? Why was the roach in my house? Well, I guess we have invaded so much of nature’s space that now the animals are trying to take their space back from us. 

            Exhausted and committed to not killing roaches anymore (the guilty feeling won), and instead, resolved to collecting them in a cup and throwing them outside in the yard (let the dogs or cats outside carry the guilt), I tried to go back to sleep. That’s when I realized I was still thirsty. This time, I turned the lights on in the kitchen. I know roaches hate the light. As I was standing by the water dispenser, I felt the buzz of a mosquito around my legs. I instinctively slapped while letting out a curse word.

            I looked up the sky (ceiling, really) and said, “C’mon. The mosquito was biting me!”

            Before my husband could have said anything, I asked him, “How about mosquitoes? Is it bad to kill them as well?”

            “Ah….! Nah. Mosquitoes are bad. Even God would understand that,” he replied, turned to his side facing the other way, and went right back to sleep. The sleep reserved to the innocents.