A Letter

When I consider my predicament, I am filled with shallow sorrow. I lay night after night and consider my actions. I am never to sure of how I feel. During certain nights, I shed tears, for I am distraught with guilt and sadness. Other nights, when the moon is bright, and it glows into my room, I laugh, uncontrollably. When I was a child, I would read Shakespearean tragedies and laugh. I understand that my statement shall be perceived by some as melodramatic and maybe even petty. The thought of reading tragedies for comedic purposes is far from original, but my life is not original. I live within a box. I can feel the walls phasing closer and closer from me. The shifts act like the tides for I find they both correspond to the ebbs and flows of the moon. My first friend, and my last enemy, told me that she couldn't understand how the cosmos couldn't affect our lives and moods. I used to believe her, and in some respects I still do, yet, I feel deep within me that I am so distinctly small that the cosmos does not affect my life. I state this not because I disagree on our micro-finite importance; I state my position on the strength of that reality. We are so minute that the grotesque power and force of the universe do not have the time nor the reason to affect us. The statistical chance that we, being so small within a space practically infinite in size, would be directly, or even indirectly affected by the actions of the universe is highly unlikely. We might as well live within a vacuum within the universe itself. I still feel though, and I still live. 

Pondering on deep seeded philosophical issues does not tame my unabashed hunger for chasteness. Any action, when considered and analyzed on a macro-level of analysis, becomes morally and humanly inconsequential. I can redeem my actions through any number of logical paths, be it through religious, nihilistic, macro, and micro philosophical thought. Once I reach a logical end conclusion which absolves me of my "crime", I then add it to the concoction of salvations I have been brewing over the years. Wether I invoke Nietzsche, Kant, Hobbes, Plato, or Hegel, I have found my actions vindicated. 

Yet, I feel guilt. For although greater moral, amoral, and anti-moral thinkers than I have found a way to exonerate my conduct, I know what I did was wrong. I have a few theories. One is that despite my carefully considered and methodically researched absolutions, I cannot shed the truth that society, the very institution I committed my act against, is unwilling or unable to forgive me. It is a burden I must carry with me. Still, I find all my intellectualizing of the past has left a bitter taste in mouth. I have an instinctual, irrational, and tiresome irking that I am wrong. That I am evil. 

I can debate what "evil" is, and wether it is qualitative or the result of lacking virtue, or both, it is unimportant. I believe I am evil. My basic instincts, the very things that brought me to this place have not only enabled me to commit my acts of evil, but have confirmed what I feel deep inside. I continue to search for a rational conception that can override my instinctual beliefs of myself, for I feel that if I do not I shall die of laughter and of despair. I hope that you will not judge me harshly, for these walls are not meant to keep me from hurting you. They are meant to keep you at bay, and away from my mistakes. 

Sincerely yours,

Epimētheús