Please notice this...

[sjcarpediem]

Clear, 17C

I am usually the first to preach not to keep secrets. Well, I've realized that I have one. A really big one. A guilty, horrible one.

I once lied about my identity; and benefited in ways that money cannot equal ever, under any god or heathen, while someone, somewhere, must have suffered. It doesn't matter how naive or knifing or plausibly deniable it initially was; or how or when I realized the fact and the weight of the lie I told.

The fact is that I told it and I benefited from it. I discovered and experienced and when I understood that I had been given access to that only through a lie I tried and tried to make the lie a truth. In part of doing that, I see now that I actually perpetuated it.

Until I also understood that it was once a lie and would always be a lie; no matter what happened as a result.

We all tell lies. We all make mistakes; and though I usually feel like I've made more than my fair share of big ones, the fact is that I have--almost as a rule--accepted, even sought, bearing full responsibility for them (even if I have regretted it, later, or known that I would).

The lie is not my secret, nor is the mistake of it.

My secret is that I have never atoned for my dishonesty. The worse of it is that I have meanwhile been praised and honored for being honest.

That part on how I gained from it is only to emphasize to what degree atonement is necessary.

The fact of the matter is that I have kept this secret because I did not know how to deal with the repercussions of letting it out.

Well.

I'm done with that.

I'm sorry to everyone who was tricked and misled into believing things about me that aren't true (though to be fair and honest to those who've joined me only in the last five years, you had already missed my error by then). I know that now you know I can't be trusted because there's no way to sort the fact from fiction. You must always wonder, now, if I am who and what I say I am or seem to be.

If I was a decent person I'd never tell another soul--and that's what I thought I was trying to do for the past five-plus years. Maybe I'm just being weak and taking "the easy way out" by outing myself after the recent chain of disappointments and challenges and cries in the night for support of some kind....

But I realize I was wrong then and am, now, and always will be until I've earned and been granted forgiveness from the ones I've wronged. I don't enjoy being wrong and the longer it goes on the more people I'll need to apologize to and beg forgiveness from. I'm damming this polluted stream.

So I'm starting, here.

Actually, that's another lie... I've already started somewhere else. The plan is to start at the outside, with the least affected and work my way in to the ones I'm aware of harming most directly.

If you want details or to harangue me or de-flist me or try to exact penitance or other explanation; I'll be leaving this entry public, and screening replies in case of any foolishness. The point is that your comment is between you and I unless you request otherwise.

Comments

[bowtomecha.livejournal.com]

yes a slaveowner can be a white southerner. i was just stating that i believe that most people of cherokee descent have a better chance of being descended from a cherokee slaveowner than southern whites have of being a descendant of a white slaveowner. mostly because there actually werent all that many white slaveowners in comparison to non slave owning whites in the south to begin with, plus the cherokees were in smaller numbers yet were known to have slaves a hundred years before their scattering. with the idea in mind that they most likely had most of the same common ancestors multiple times in their recent history (small communities tend to have greater chances of having one ancestor appear multiple times, say a 4th great grandfather also as a 5th or a 3rd grandfather somewhere else across multiple lineages, the result of distant cousins intermarrying) so they would have a better chance of being that much closer to the slavery issue than many southern whites. not that it should matter. but i think it will in the future since repriations from an indian nation might be easier to get than from the national government itself and what with the cherokees kicking out most members of slave descent recently it could at some point go that way.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Gotcha. I read your clauses incorrectly. Sorry!

Ahh... so they're targeting tribe members of slave descent... I hadn't put it together.

Isn't that some kind of ethnic cleansing/genocide; except instead of murdering the people physically you murder them socially (and I don't mean popularity contests, I mean to their social systems, e.g., the tribe)?