It's the couple you see in the house across from you having dinner together. The man walking his dog at night, the family down the street getting home and getting ready for dinner. The woman who lives alone, the man who lives alone, and the couple that has no children. It's your mailman, a stranger that walked by you, the guy at your local grocery store, and the woman who teaches 10th grade. It's the dad of a friend, it's a female relative, the guy riding his bike, and the couple who walks together. It's the picture perfect couple who sits at dinner, across from each other, smiles politely and continues their elegant dinner that the wife cooked after work, in silence.
All of these people have one thing in common, they've all either had an affair, raped someone, or more drastically...are a murderer.
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| From the movie Gone Girl. The creepy husband with his dead wife. |
Have you ever stopped in your tracks and looked around you? Really looked into the eyes of complete strangers or into the fake smiles of your neighbors. For all you know, that lovely neighbor could have murdered 12 children. For all you know you walked by a stranger who just got done raping someone. For all you know, when you sit down at dinner tonight across from your husband or wife, they could be hiding an affair from you and you wouldn't even know it.
Can we honestly say we truly know the person sleeping next to us at night? Do we really know that they would never harm a hair on anyone? How do you know that? How do you know that one day something won't tick in their mind and make them commit a sinful act? And after they're done, they go home, act like nothing happened, lay next to you in bed, and hold you in their arms. And yet, you feel so safe in that person's arms.
Who's to say that guy walking his dog, isn't going to meet up with a woman and have sex with her? Who's to say the couple with the lovely family down the street isn't in an abusive relationship?
The chilling truth is we don't know. The chilling fact is that you never truly know a person, because you do not control their thoughts or their actions. So what makes us so keen to feeling safe with a significant other? Where in our minds do we really know that our spouse would never harm us or anyone else?
I people watch, a lot. I love observing people and really feel like you get to know a piece of a stranger just by watching them and their actions. The way they talk to people, the way they have no patience, the way they yell at their wife, or the creepy feeling you get from certain people. You can learn a lot about people just by sitting down on a bench and observing for an hour.
As I work around so many different people and strangers every day, I think about this from time to time. I think about the thoughts going through someones head. I think about that innocent kiss a husband gives to his wife before leaving to work. I think about that overly uptight couple who properly sit across from each other at dinner, and I think about all their secrets they keep from one another. They seem so perfect, and so neat and proper, but inside they are holding many secrets of unhappiness and deceit.
It's an even scarier thought that our fathers, mothers, siblings, or grown children can be one of these things; a murderer, a rapist, and adulterer, or an abuser.
I wonder when did we lose all ration within ourselves to completely give our trust, and really give the safety of our lives to others. When did we become so engulfed in the theory that true love really makes us feel safe from the 'bad guys', when that person could possibly be a 'bad guy'? How do we accept risking our lives for some other person that we love?
Sure, one can argue trust, loyalty, and actions prove that they're safe and not one of the bad guys. But where in the argument can you validate your sureness that they don't have the capability to harm another human being if they so easily choose to?
It comes down to this...we really don't know. We really can't pick out the good guys from the bad guys. It's so twisted now a days, that the perfect husband could be either or. Simply because it's just human nature, we ignore these evil thoughts, we choose to be naive when deep down inside these thoughts have most likely crossed your mind.
What scares me most is that the bad people are usually good and the good people are usually bad. How do I really know that the lovely man who just smiled at me isn't a serial rapist or murderer? It's questions that repeatedly go through our minds. It's logic vs reality. It's empathy vs adversity. It's you against them.
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| Laci & Scott Peterson. They seemed like a happy couple, a handsome guy and a beautiful girl. If you passed them in the street you would probably never think Scott looked like a murderer. But he was. |
