Kill Them All

Kill Them All May 17, 2012

They Look Like UsHow’s that for an alarming title? Hmmm… I know it’s making you wonder, “Crap, has she really gone off the deep end this time?”

Nah… Hear me  out.

Legend has it that during the religious war that resulted in the extermination of the Cathar “heresy” in the south of France at Carcassonne  and Béziers in the 11th century one of the generals came to the man in charge of this “purge” and asked, in essence, “These people all look like us, how will we know who’s the enemy?”

The man in charge, one Simon de Montfort, was reputed to reply, “Kill them all, and let God sort them out afterwards.”

So that’s what I’m doing.

I’m killing expectations.

Expectations that it’s just wrong for me to be pure and pious and steamy and sexy—all at the same time. Because I am. (Get over it.) Expectations that it’s just wrong for me to say I love housework, and then not do any…all day. (Because some days are like that.) Expectations that I should be happy loving one man all my life and he should be so fulfilling that I needn’t look elsewhere for anything. (What, and give up roller skating?)

So I say, “Kill them all.” Kill all the expectations that other people have of me. Kill all the ideas, outmoded or otherwise, that say that I’m supposed to be like someone else you met once, who was just so great.

I’m great. I am.

So, I say, “Kill them all.” Kill all the crazy ideas that I myself have of reconciling all the diverging streams of thought that I have meandering through me and had (apparently vain) hopes of merging into some mighty Mississippi of rational thought.

Who cares?

Yes, yes, yes. Life would be a lot easier if I could just be one, or the other. Maybe it would be easier. I don’t know. I do know that stuffing parts of myself down into a dustbin labeled “Unacceptable Bits People Don’t Understand” is, for me, something that I’ve been trying to do for over forty years and I’m just doggone sick of it.

So I say, “Kill them all, and let God sort me out afterwards.” Because He will. He’s bigger than my expectations.


Browse Our Archives