Speaking the Unspeakable

for many years my technique when someone had something difficult to tell me was this:
i - did you kill somebody?
? - no
i - did you rape somebody?
? - no
i - well, then it cannot be so bad... just tell me.
? - ....
and then the words would flow.

BUT

i never imagined. i never prepared myself. i never thought about.
the day that someone would answer yes to one of these questions.

i'm not a person who thinks in rational or logic ways - i guess that if i were i would have realised that statistically it would be impossible to go through a whole life without meeting the uglier side of human beings. especially since i meet quite a lot of people on my way and have a tendency to cut right to the bone. i'll ask people anything if i like them.


it suddenly happened. it certainly happened. i sat there, in front of someone i trusted and the answer was yes. now i'm thinking that the reaction we have in such a situation might be the very definition of who we are, of what we are. a human with humanity or not? thinking that the response we offer shapes not only the one answering but the one telling the terrible and both their lives.

it's the kind of situation we only come across a very few times in our lives, if ever. it's the kind of situation the wise ones tell the rest of us about; karma, ubuntu, turn the other cheek, what have we... it's the kind of situation i never prepared for.

i haven't slept very well for some nights. i brood - awake and asleep - over this experience and of how many facets there are to humanity. how nothing is the black and white i long for. even in the darkest darkness, in the most evil story, in the extremely troubled mind, there is colour.