Random vaguely depressing thoughts

Reading through Kareila's last entry got me thinking about something I was also recently doing.
I was looking through my OLD magickal journal. The one I started in 1994 when Pandora first lent me "To Start A Silver Broomstick".
The journal was ALWAYS meant to discuss magick in my life. What it ended up being was a cross-section of my life for that period in my life.
By and large, I'm not ashamed of who I am and who I've been. I'm not ashamed of the long circuituous path I've taken in life, of taking 9 years to graduate college and so on.

But... my RIT years.

It was like those stories of.. other evil books. I wanted to put it down, to stop the flood of memories but I couldn't.

My RIT years are the only time I've ever really been ashamed of who I was.
I was... such an asshole. A manipulative bastard.
I cried "If you don't pay attention to me, I'm going to kill myself! Hear me? Kill myself!" so many times, my friends got sick of it.
I'll probably never understand how kareila put up with me then. Or arabella.

I was just posting to xb95 how he has to let the past go, to get over it and move on. It's not an easy thing. I couldn't do it myself.
My father had destroyed my life as I knew it. He had lavished me with gifts as a child, giving me anything I could possibly have asked for and then when I was 13, he took it all away, leaving us with nothing, not even a home.
That was, for me, if not THE defining moment in my life, certainly one of the top ones.
On one hand, I swore to be nothing like him, to be as good a person as I possibly could.
On another, it made me angry, pessimistic and exceedingly bitter at a world that was cruel enough to let such things happen to a bunch of kids.
That anger never disappeard. It still burns within me.

So... it was so much harder, in 94, when my brother started down the same path. Suddenly (and it WAS fairly sudden for me. I feel like I can say... one day he just woke up a new man), he blamed my mother for how terrible his life was. He didn't care about school, couldn't stay out of trouble and was prone to fits of violence.
I didn't deal with Marc much then.. I wasn't there for it.. I was still at RIT.
I know that he did terrible things to my family. He stole things of major import to them. My mom's jewely and my brother's (who, since we were fairly poor, did NOT have a lot of luxuries) Gameboy and game.
I remember... and I'd probably prefer to forget it, really... a time when Marc and I squared off in the living room, each one of us brandishing a big kitchen knife, Josh yelling at us to stop and my idiotic dog Lance... between us...
I remember him throwing the knife to the floor, too close to Lance.. and it sticking there, handle up.
I remember numerous times I had to physically throw Marc out of the house... once while he was busy choking Josh.. over FUCKING CEREAL (Josh had taken the last bowl of a cereal Marc wantesd. So what did he do? He started to choke him.)
And I remember the horror stories and reliving the past at the horror our father had visited upon us...
For better or worse, I'm much the antithesis of someone like kareila who seems to have a boundless supply of love and acceptance for people. I'm not like that at all.
I can truly say I'm capable of hate. Something that I don't think too many other people can say.
I hated... I hated with all my heart.
Perhaps that's the reason I still can't quite believe Marc in his attempts to, on his own terms, be a part of our family again. They aren't my terms. He's still... for lack of a better word.. flaky. Even if he's really off drugs (and I truly disbelieve that) and busy bouncing from min wage job to another and actually making a sincere effort to be a part of our family on his terms... I don't know. I can't get to a point where I really trust him.
I may never trust him again.
My mom asked me... if the day came when Marc really proved he was sorry, tried to show in every possibly way that he regrets his actions and wants to be a part of my family again, if I'd accept him. To her, the answer is simple. Yes. He's family and therefore I should accept him.
But... I don't know. Just because mom feels I should... doesn't mean I ever could.

Anyways, that's not the point of this post.

The point is this... I was an angry, bitter BASTARD of a young man. I was.. terrible. I was finally surrounded by people like me and I threw them all away from me.
I went through THREE newsgroups... fitting in, making friends.. then when someone said something, blowing up and being the absolute biggest bastard I could. To one lady who had related to me how she had been sexually abused as a child and how it had hurt her, I threw it in her face in anger, mocking her. That followed me wherever I went for a long long time.
I was no better on my first MU**s either.
Hell, I got booted off OtherMUSH for Twinkery. And it was nothing but, no matter what my reason was. If I dealt with a player doing the same thing, I'd probably have booted them off too.
I have been accused, many times, of being a sophormoric jerk of a man, without the emotional maturity age should bring. To some extent, that's true now, but by and large, that's based on my early career as a MU**er.
Really...and few of you know this, which is fine.. I only settled down about the time ChaoticMUX came into being. About the time I slowly began to develop a sense of self-worth and realized that I did not want to be the angry. bitter bastard that I was.

This is part of who I was.. and who I am. To some extent, I take pride that I'm not that way anymore... not that manipulative and not THAT big of an asshole... that I can stay on one place for more than a few months without being booed off. But... it doesn't ease the shame. There are a lot of "If/Then"s I could conclude.
If I'd been a better person, then I might still be on usenet... if not a.f.m-p, then on alt.1d or possibly even alt.devilbunnies.
If I'd been a better person, maybe I'd still have been in contact with good friends who drifted away, like Charis.
If I'd been a better person... who knows the possibilities that might have existed. I don't. I can only imagine.

I know that deep inside, I'm still the same angry, bitter person.. I just, in general, funnel it better by posting my rants at LJ about the stupidity around me that angers and annoys me.
But.. I'm not so far divorced from a man I was less than 10 years ago and still alot farther than the ideal of the man I'd like to be than I care to generally admit.