A Last Testament?

Know that if I’m dead within a few days, it was my father who killed me.

Know that if he’s dead within a few days, I killed him.

If ever you start listening with your mouth and thinking with your arrogance, try and remember that God gave you actual parts that serve the function and that it’s best to use those, since they were built for the job. 

It’s not hard to answer questions yourself.  Thus, it is easily a temptation to decide you already know everything.  You can read many clues that from your perspective indicate one thing, but ultimately the thing turns out to be wrong.  When someone says they’ll call and they don’t for extended periods of time, it can very well be simply an act of ignorance, callousness, or disinterest.  It could also mean other things that you don’t know from your realm of influence.  This is something that has happened recently, but not connected to my father.

My father stated that in doing a task that I had recently done, I was ill-equipped because he did not observe the equipment.  He was not searching for the equipment, nor was he looking for it, he only spent five minutes passing through to have taken in everything inside cupboards, dressers, and closets all closed.  So, when he accused me of being ill-equipped (and, sinc e the task was cleaning the apartment also accused me of being a slob) I told him that he had simply missed the items in question in his passing.  He asked the question: "Do you think I’m an idiot" as to indicate I was also a liar.  Thus, I asked, "Do you think I am one?" 

In my head, the logic was that I must be an idiot to clean an apartment without cleaning supplies.  He told me he in fact did not think I was an idiot, but….and yes, I cut him off.  My logic was simple, either he was right or I was right.  If he was right, then I am an idiot.  If I am right, then he obviously was one.  There was no grey area…

The grey area would have been if he had asked if I didn’t have the supplies or asked what supplies I had.  But he did not.  He instead accused me of not having them.  He did not ask, he answered.  His answer was wrong.  His answer was based on the assumption that I was an idiot…plain and simple.  There was no fact other than his brief glimpses in retrospect of not having seen them when he passed through the apartment.  That was the sole fact.  The facts against his answer stood in: the day he passed through was not the day of cleaning, his pass was short and was not meant for observation, his limitted observation did not encompass every piece of the apartment — in fact missing the most likely places for storage of cleaning devices, the fact that apartment two days later was clean.  Had he based his answer/question on fact, he clearly would not have begun the discussion…instead he began it because he based his answer/question on assumption.  His assumption was that I was an idiot and a liar.  His assumption proved that he was an idiot by fact.  For, the fact was that a man who ignores the facts and answers a question of which he has little information and only his own belief is not a man who should be trusted with any thinking.  We can see where his thinking gets him.  Not very far at all. 

Now, I do think my father is an idiot.  I think he has knowledge and he can be savvy, but he is ultimately arrogant and proud.  He is self-indulgent in the belief of his own superiority.   These things do not allow someone to be wise, they allow someone to be foolish. 

What about me?  Am I not arrogant and proud and self-indulgent?  I think I am as well.  And maybe I’m just lucky to have been right this time and many times I will find myself wrong and others, maybe even my own children, will state the same things about me.  But I think that I am not as far as my father in these traits….that I am much shorter…that I am arrogant and proud because I take my time to know what is right.  That, to me, can justify the traits.  I am self-indulgent, but I am also self-loathing in the way that goes back to those entries ago.  I hate myself.  I hate myself for not standing up to my father more: I backed down after he threatened me with violence/severe punishment (probably castigation) because I said that one of the two of us must be idiots based on the scenario provided.  He knew I didn’t mean me.  I actually didn’t mean him either, further proving his idiocy by his immediate jumping to conclusions.  What I simply meant was that the rules to his hypothesis were wrong.  That he should have approached the entire process from a question rather than an accusation.  He didn’t hear this.  He was simply hearing defiance, he was hearing the words and not processing them because his arrogance had already picked up on the word idiot in reference to possibly himself.

I also hate myself for taking his money all the years when I knew he was a bastard.  I will never be able to boast that I stood on my own two feet.  I won’t be able to boast much at all.  I’ll simply say that I survived as quietly as I could, like  a coward.  Maybe someone will argue it was braver and smarter because I didn’t have to work so hard or as much, but I would have liked to be a little more stupidly heroic than crafty and devious.  Alas, I’m not the body-type…;).  I also hate myself because I know that the second sentence is a lie.  I would never shoot my father unless he attacked me…then I gladly would.  I would never kill him first…I want to badly…it would be so simple.  But then I would ruin my own life for the sake of impatient desires to be happy and at ease.  That would be something my father would do….lucky for me he’s greedier and more arrogant so that killing me would only hurt his desire for money and make him look bad in front of other people.  I’m very close to believing had I resisted anymore, he would have over-ruled those emotions in favor of violence. 

Oh well.  This after yesterday’s telling me that he believed I was brilliant.  What a lying bastard.  A cheap, lying bastard.  The day he dies I won’t mourn.  If I’m lucky and he lasts, I’ll have the chance to be nasty and not show at the funeral.  That will be something I’ll do.  I’ll take God’s damnation for that.  It’s who I truly am.  I’ll let God punish me, but my father doesn’t deserve the right.