It was October 7th, 2009, and the forest behind Presumpscot Elementary School is battered and trodden as ever. Usually gangs of trouble-causing middle schoolers roam the area, but on that day, things were quiet. The trees were standing grand and tall, ancient and wise, their knowledge communicated by silence. Bugs were crawling, leaves were stretching towards the sun, and I was sandwiched between two oak trees with a notebook in my lap.
I met a delay in walking there. When I was within a few yards distance of the forest, I encountered two chipmunks and didn't want to move closer to them from fear of scaring them away. They were scurrying around on the ground and didn't seem to take notice of each other until one of them found an acorn. He put it down briefly to wash his face and the other one took it. They commenced to begin squabbling over the acorn. My first reaction would have been-- as I had been conditioned to since birth-- to categorize the chipmunk who originally had the acorn as "good" and the one who originally stole the acorn as "bad." But then I reminded myself-- as I have been trying to do-- that animals are not good or evil. They have not been blessed (cursed?) with a sense or what is right and wrong, they have been cursed (blessed) with a sense of live or die.
They were not squabbling over an acorn because of justice or injustice, but because they needed to eat to live.
Sitting on the feet of the oak tree was making my butt hurt and my back was beginning to ache within minutes. However much I may love it, I felt that, as a human, there was something that set me apart from nature- a protective (excluding) bubble that was and is sawing away at that connection of the souls between tree and girl- girl and girl- girl and other humans.
A scarlet letter, perhaps?
We all have our secret sins. We crinkle our noses at the bad chipmunk for stealing what is not "rightfully" his but our sins are so deeply buried that not even WE realize how much we have in common with the unjust beast. Even nonconformists will say anything to be liked. If we truly did not care what others thought about us,-- and what we thought of ourselves-- we would always tell the truth.
I honestly couldn’t tell the chipmunks apart, so I can't tell you who got the acorn, unfortunately. But what I can tell you is that the one that didn't get it went in search of another and they both went on with their lives.
The leaves tell the truth. They bear their black spots without being ashamed because they realize that the other leaves have black spots, too. Black spots everywhere. They don't seem to mind. Leaves seem to have already learned that being hypocritical towards the other leaves would just be another spot to add to their already blackened visages.
“Maybe I’ll write something or something.
Something that makes people want to tell.”
“But aren’t there things you won’t tell your mom,
‘cause you’re scared of what she’ll think?”
…
“But, are you courageous enough to admit your sins first?
Because I know I’m not.”
“I guess I’m gonna have to. If I do end up writing something,
I can’t be a hypocrite about it.”
“No, that would just be another letter to add.”
It's thoughts like these that make me want to go up to everyone I know and ask what their scarlet letters are.
“And so we pretend like we don’t have any problems,
Because then we’d be just like them.
We wouldn’t be special.
That’s what I think, anyhow.”
“But I’m sure we’d all be so much happier
If we told the truth.”
“Probably. But by nature, we’re scarred creatures.”
“It makes me want to ask everyone I know what their scarlet letters are.”
“Well, darling, there are things you won’t tell people, aren’t there?”
I thought of my online friend Aaez. He lives in Pakistan and is an online pen pal of sorts to me. I love him dearly and wonder what his scarlet letters are. His religion has kept him so pure that I can think of but one thing that could possibly burn his chest-- he is bisexual. He is bisexual in a world where sodomites are sent to Hell and women are slaughtered in honor killings for cheating on their husbands. His father just died of cancer. I wonder how he must feel.
“I’m sure he has his secret sins, we all do.”
“Do you have any, Paul?”
“Yes.
They’re secrets, though.”
My dearest friend Paul doesn’t want to tell me about his scarlet letters. I guess I don’t blame him. We’re the best of friends and I don’t know about him but I’d absolutely die if he stopped being my friend, and sometimes it seems that I value our friendship more than his right to the truth.
Putting me in nature leaves me alone with my thoughts and leaving me alone with my thoughts is a bad idea. I begin to question absolutely everything and everyone. It's a freedom that binds me. You can leave the forest and go back to normal life but the thoughts haunt you until you pay attention to them.
We all have our scarlet letters.
All of those thoughts started to depress me and my back was getting achy as ever so I decided to get up and walk around. Rocks were strewn everywhere, brush pressed back on its heels by the ever invading children curious of what secrets the forests may be keeping. The exploring children, still naive and young, have not yet begun to understand that all the secrets they are searching for are locked up tight in their own minds. Does that mean that having no secrets makes you inhuman? What about the people who don’t think they have any, does that mean they have so deeply buried their sins that they don’t even recognize they have them anymore?
[Goodness of humans paragraph]
“I don’t want to hurt my friends.
I already am, they just don’t know it,
But if they found out,
Who’s to say that they wouldn’t hate me with what I’ve done?”
“I doubt you’ve done anything too atrocious.
But, even if you have,
I think it would get them thinking about their OWN scarlet letters.
And even if they didn’t make them public,
They’d at least not judge you for yours.”
“But what if you don’t know? I mean- that’s what you think.
What if the fact you think that just adds to my own?”
“Well, then I’m a shit judge of character.”
“Hah! Oh, Paul.
I love you. Know that, okay? No matter what I do?”
“I love you, too. And really, darling,
I’ve stopped judging people for the things they’ve done.
Anymore,
It’s all just about the way people love that I form my opinions on.”
For the past couple months or so, my mind has been plagued with the realization that all humans, at one point, will hurt one another; They will be in a situation where they are the "bad guy." I came to realize this while spending two weeks with my father in Massachusetts over the summer. All my life I had categorized one parent as good and one as bad depending on what I thought they'd done and what they said about each other. I realized while I was there that the both of them have done equally horrible things to each other in an attempt, even after all these years, to mollify their broken hearts; His broken because she broke it and hers broken because she was forced to break his. At this point they could have moved on with their lives and never seen each other again, save the occasional nostalgic thought, but this is not how it happened. They are bound to each other for the rest of their lives because they had children together. Every time they look at my sister and I, they will think of each other. They are not bad people, they are good people caught in a bad situation. Bad things happen to good people because good people do bad things.
I was devastated when I realized that that I am no exception to this human trait. However... things seem to be taking on a lighter, albeit more angsty tone.
Everyone lies.
Everyone has their own scarlet letters.
It's what makes us human.
I just wish it wasn't so wrong to admit that you're human.
“This whole conversation makes me want to tell you something,
Something really horrible I’ve done that I haven’t told anyone.
But I don’t think I’m quite ready for it yet.”
“Okay, if you’re not ready, don’t do it.
But, know this, that I won’t ever, ever judge you or stop loving you for anything you’ve done, mmkay?
‘Cause I’m flawed, too.”
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