on being a bad person

core beliefs & deductive reasons

I write to you today, a woman in recovery. Coming clean isn’t easy, but I owe it to you all to be honest. I am in remission from being a Bad Person.

I’ve been a bad person for as long as I can remember, but I’m proud to say those days are behind me. I am a new woman. A woman anew. I’ve got a fresh lease on life and damn does it feel great.

What do you mean? You ask. You? A bad person? Surely not.

But I assure you, I was.

Until two months ago, I understood myself to be this way. It was as true to me as anything. I am twenty-five. I have blue eyes. I am a bad person. It was a core belief.

In cognitive therapy, core beliefs are, to speak plainly, firm beliefs held at our core—absolutes that inform our worldview and self-perception.” I hate to cite Medical News Today, but the article does a concise job of summing up the common archetypes:

• Beliefs about goodness: a person’s belief that they are good or bad or that other people are mostly good or bad

• Beliefs about likability: beliefs such as “I am unlovable” and “I am likable”

• Beliefs about the world: beliefs such as “the world is a dangerous place” and “the world is fundamentally unfair”

• Beliefs about competence: beliefs such as “I am intelligent and resourceful” and “I will succeed if I try hard”

Core beliefs are fixtures of the mind, heavy and immovable units of conviction. These fixtures are largely upheld by confirmation bias: we seek information that confirms our core beliefs while simultaneously dismissing or rejecting evidence that contradicts them. One of my fixtures is labeled “YOU = BAD PERSON.” For a long time, I was only able to accept affirmation of this. If someone disagreed I would say:

No, you don’t get it. I’ve probably just manipulated you into thinking I’m good. I’m sorry about that. Please believe me, I’m no good at all.

What made me feel this way? Oh, a number of things I’m sure. I have hurt people. I have said sorry more times than I can count. After doing some solid introspective digging, I found my epithet has two primary origins:

1. I am a selfish person

2. I am a white person

I consider myself to be a caring, empathetic, warm and loving human being, but I am nonetheless deeply, deeply self-interested. Selfish actions have spawned numerous terrible consequences. In elementary school, I was competitive with new students who disrupted the social hierarchy, threatening my station as Oh Perfect and Beautiful One. When the intelligent and sparkly Corinne joined my first grade class, I bullied her for writing her cursive ‘f’’s’ too close together until she cried. Corinne ended up playing field hockey at Stanford.

In high school, I had an emotionally intimate relationship with someone while we both had partners. When his girlfriend sent me a string of venomous texts after putting up with it for almost a year, I denied it. But she was right. Maggie, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I liked that little gingerbread man. If it helps, my first ever gay sex dream was about his sister. Claudia, call me.

To make it worse, I ended up cheating on him by kissing someone else at a Student Diversity Leadership Conference. When I returned home from Florida (an already lawless place), I confessed. He cried on the foot of my bed as I shouted I’M SORRY I’M SORRY I’M SORRY. And I was sorry, sorry to have hurt him. I didn’t regret what I did. I don’t regret it now. Diversity leadership conferences are a powerful genesis of human connection. It’s not nice to kiss somebody while you’re in a relationship with someone else, but sometimes that’s the only way to realize your wasp-golfer-suburban-wonder-bread boo thang isn’t cutting it anymore.

Regrettably, I made similar choices in college.

Another contributor to my moral self-image is whiteness. When I became more involved in social justice, I didn’t want anyone to get the impression that I thought of myself as a “good white person,” which is the common holier-than-thou attitude of white people who think they’re doing good in the world by coming to one Black Student Union meeting and making a poster. I was so committed to proving to my peers of color that I knew I did not deserve a pat on the back for showing up, that I understood the significance of my white privilege, that I self-identified as the oppressor that I began to see myself as intrinsically bad, no matter how hard I tried to do good. It’s a charming paradox: In my attempt to show people that I know I’m not a good person so as to prove that I actually am, I viewed myself as a very bad person. And do you want to know the truth? I didn’t feel like a “good white person” for showing up, but I did feel like a better one than those who didn’t.

I don’t want any sympathy for this. I would hope a person of color would read that and think: What? Should I play you a song on my tiny violin? I am telling you this just to tell you, because it is the truth. Sometimes assigning moral value to our thoughts stops us from dissecting who we really are. I would rather be honest than right. If I can be honest, maybe one day I can be good.

So here is the truth: I am a white person and I want to be a good person. I am also a white person with privilege, internalized racism, and everything else we can expect a white person to have, except bangs.

I have a track record of selfishness, cheating, lying and saying shit that’s really, really white. I have strung along people who loved me out of the fear of being alone and manipulated partners into staying with me for similar reasons. My stories stretch for miles. Of the Commandments I score a 3/10—I have never killed (though it’s crossed my mind), I have never spread a rumor about my neighbor (though she’s a rightwing nutcase and I’d like to), and I respect my parents just enough to keep it on the list. I don’t think my track record is strong.

Then how, after all of this, can I preach reform? Why am I no longer a Bad Person?

In July, I had dinner with Augusta, who, aside from being a best friend, is also the closest I’ve come to a mentor in my adult life.

Over Pad Thai I plunged into a manifesto on life and love and my projections for the future. It’s something I am prone to do and Augusta is used to it by now. I am on a lifelong quest to fall in love at least once, but it’s also the thing I fear most. I told her:

I just don’t think I’ll ever find true, lasting love. I’m a bad person. It won’t happen for me. If I find it, I’ll ruin it.

Augusta just blinked and said:

I don’t understand. If you’re a bad person, why not just fall in love with someone who is also a bad person? I don’t see why two bad people can’t find love. Anyone can find love.

To her, my concern was peripheral—You’re a bad person? So what? What does goodness have to do with finding love? I had presented an argument that was valid but not sound:

1. Premise 1: I am a bad person.

2. Premise 2: Bad people cannot find true love.

3. Conclusion: I cannot find true love because I am a bad person.

Augusta interrogated Premise 2, her argument being:

1. Premise 1: You are a bad person.

2. Premise 2: Bad people can find true love, so long as it is with other bad people.

3. Conclusion: You, a bad person, can find true love so long as it is with another bad person.

I thought about the bad people I knew to be in love. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were rumored to have rather enjoyed one other. Maybe I’m just a girl, looking for her Jeffrey.

But this didn’t make me feel settled. In fact, the prospect of an evil love felt undeniably, unquestionably wrong. Through Augusta’s argument, I realized something important: I did not think I deserved to end up with a bad person. My argument had evolved:

1. Premise 1: Everyone deserves to find true love.

2. Premise 2: Only bad people deserve to find true love with other bad people.

3. Premise 3: I do not deserve to find true love with a bad person.

4. Conclusion: I am not a bad person.

Instead of rejecting my core belief, Augusta accepted my first premise: “I am a bad person.” In doing this she circumvented my defense mechanism—the part of my brain that says NO, YOU’RE WRONG, I’M WICKED! Only then was I able to explode my core belief from the inside.

Augusta examined an idea as morally charged as “I am a bad person” and assigned it neutral, even benign implications. While I tell myself: I am a bad person and that is bad, Augusta says: You are a bad person and that is fine! Of course, to say this with confidence indicates Augusta must have had a hunch that I am not as rotten as I say, but still, I appreciate her analysis.

In Maggie Nelson’s book “The Argonauts,” she explores the writer’s paradox which I have oversimplified for you below:

1. As writers, we write to explain we mean.

2. What we mean cannot be expressed perfectly in words.

3. When we write, it is impossible to explain exactly what we mean.

4. Writing therefore fails to accomplish its purpose.

5. But still, we keep writing.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to adequately express in words how instantly Augusta’s evaluation shattered the belief I had held since adolescence. She broke a spell no one had been able to break. I have since stopped seeing myself as a bad person, which has healed something in me.

Still, I can’t quite accept the alternative. I do not know what would earn me the right to claim I’m a Good Person. I’m only in my mid-twenties, so I’ve got plenty of time to swing in either direction. I suppose my cards haven’t been fully dealt.

For now, I am trying to take the pressure off and refrain from hovering in the absolute. I am self-interested and kind. I am white and I am learning. I think that’s the best I can really do.

I think being a good person or a bad person isn’t as important as what you become when you accept yourself as you are.

I’ll probably never be the best person, but I’m decent.

Overall, I’d give myself a B+.

xoxo,

Shelby