My Evil Twin
Most people have a collection of sometimes opposing personality characteristics. A person can be loving and hateful, funny and serious, good and evil, happy and sad, optimistic and pessimistic. Some of those characteristics are more dominant than others, so a person may be more of one thing than another; but the complete picture of a person includes some amount of all of the characteristics.
People who know me in real life generally think I’m a nice guy. I’m optimistic, positive, loving, caring and happy; sometimes I’m also funny, serious, energetic, lazy and boring.
But most people I know never seen my dark side. I can be cold, hurtful and vengeful, but I have to be pushed pretty hard for those characteristics to come out of their hole.
The biggest aspect of my dark side, however, is anger and it takes less pushing for that to show.
It doesn’t show much, but tonight Evil Bernie is definitely in the house. My anger is usually fueled by other people’s selfishness or disrespect. One incident here and there doesn’t mean much, but a few of those injustices piled on top of each other can unlock Evil Bernie’s cage.
Tonight’s pile is mostly stuff like the dangerous behavior of rude drivers added to an ‘it’s not my job’ attitude on the part of a few co-workers added to the general ‘cut the jobs but increase the workload’ attitude in my company added to the fewer hours of sunlight this month added to not being able to count on some other people to do their part of things added to my ongoing ‘finding myself’ journey added to anticipation of the upcoming holidays and the depression that sometimes comes with them and on and on. The end of my eleven-freakin’-hour workday was the tipping point when I was the only one left to do yet one more thing that had to be done.
So here I sit, pissed off that I didn’t do two or three other things I planned to do tonight, nursing a sore throat from screaming at other drivers during my ride home – clearly the stupidest part of Evil Bernie because they will never hear my outrage and it wouldn’t matter to them anyway, which pisses me off even more – and I come home to a dark house because a certain someone didn’t turn on any outside lights – my street has no street lights so it’s pretty damn dark here at night – and I had a damn salad for dinner because it is too late to have a big dinner because I’ll have to go to sleep in a little while so I can have another night of not-enough-sleep so I can get up early tomorrow and start it all over again.
See what I mean? It piles on.
Some people who do actually get to see my Evil Twin are amused because this guy is so different from Regular Bernie. Well I’m happy they’re amused but I’m not especially amused tonight.
Fortunately this side of me does not dominate and I almost never take it out on people. I predict that by mid-morning tomorrow I’ll be back to normal and Evil Bernie will again be locked away. I say mid-morning because I’ll be damned if I’m going in to work early to start this shit all over again. I’ll get there when I get there, which will be some time after I run the errands I had planned to run tonight.
Wow, you’re still reading this? I’d thank you but Evil Bernie is still at the keyboard. Regular Bernie will thank you tomorrow.
I’ll close with a line from an old TV show: “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
People who know me in real life generally think I’m a nice guy. I’m optimistic, positive, loving, caring and happy; sometimes I’m also funny, serious, energetic, lazy and boring.
But most people I know never seen my dark side. I can be cold, hurtful and vengeful, but I have to be pushed pretty hard for those characteristics to come out of their hole.
The biggest aspect of my dark side, however, is anger and it takes less pushing for that to show.
It doesn’t show much, but tonight Evil Bernie is definitely in the house. My anger is usually fueled by other people’s selfishness or disrespect. One incident here and there doesn’t mean much, but a few of those injustices piled on top of each other can unlock Evil Bernie’s cage.
Tonight’s pile is mostly stuff like the dangerous behavior of rude drivers added to an ‘it’s not my job’ attitude on the part of a few co-workers added to the general ‘cut the jobs but increase the workload’ attitude in my company added to the fewer hours of sunlight this month added to not being able to count on some other people to do their part of things added to my ongoing ‘finding myself’ journey added to anticipation of the upcoming holidays and the depression that sometimes comes with them and on and on. The end of my eleven-freakin’-hour workday was the tipping point when I was the only one left to do yet one more thing that had to be done.
So here I sit, pissed off that I didn’t do two or three other things I planned to do tonight, nursing a sore throat from screaming at other drivers during my ride home – clearly the stupidest part of Evil Bernie because they will never hear my outrage and it wouldn’t matter to them anyway, which pisses me off even more – and I come home to a dark house because a certain someone didn’t turn on any outside lights – my street has no street lights so it’s pretty damn dark here at night – and I had a damn salad for dinner because it is too late to have a big dinner because I’ll have to go to sleep in a little while so I can have another night of not-enough-sleep so I can get up early tomorrow and start it all over again.
See what I mean? It piles on.
Some people who do actually get to see my Evil Twin are amused because this guy is so different from Regular Bernie. Well I’m happy they’re amused but I’m not especially amused tonight.
Fortunately this side of me does not dominate and I almost never take it out on people. I predict that by mid-morning tomorrow I’ll be back to normal and Evil Bernie will again be locked away. I say mid-morning because I’ll be damned if I’m going in to work early to start this shit all over again. I’ll get there when I get there, which will be some time after I run the errands I had planned to run tonight.
Wow, you’re still reading this? I’d thank you but Evil Bernie is still at the keyboard. Regular Bernie will thank you tomorrow.
I’ll close with a line from an old TV show: “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
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