In recent years, I've managed to put the brakes on my despicable tongue.
Throughout my upbringing, it condemned me absolutely - costing friends and earning beatings. Eventually, I learned to use this weapon sparingly; or to deliver my words with a smiling face; a flesh emoticon.
I regard my cruel tongue as essentially an artefact of a destructive youth. It helped to make the lonely, self-loathing man I see in the mirror of a morning, and I've been proud that I learned to curb its more rancourous outpourings.
It takes practice and, like a recovering alcoholic, the lessons must be applied daily. The moment I believe I'm cured is in actuality the moment I am closest to a relapse, and this was the case yesterday.
I'll be able to go into the specifics of what went wrong at some point in the future. At the moment, I'm too ashamed of myself to force the words out into any sort of order. Suffice to say I spent the next two hours angrily shaking my head.
More shameful still - the damaging words were uttered in public, in front of everyone I work with. My apology for saying them in the first place was delivered by text message, in camera. Later still, a face-to-face withdrawal and the assurance that it didn't matter failed to remove the pressure of the disgust I continue to feel.
The brakes came off, and I am unspeakably disappointed in myself, because I've held them carefully for years. I am reminded of the wounding night, when, in the midst of a personal financial crisis, my father spat out the words: you've broken my fucking heart! Not only has damage been caused, but contemplating those who have been damaged causes the most distress. To subvert Nietzsche's story of the pale criminal, I can just about live with the image of the deed, but not the faces of the afflicted post-deed.
Yesterday, I broke my own fucking heart, and it came out of the blue. Hours later, I'm still frozen with shock and horror, the victim of an irreversible past.
