Good Grief/Guilt!

There is none. I came to the realization last summer than many times I feel guilty because I feel I am supposed to. Like, I have acted in a certain way, and I know it was wrong, so I feel the appropriate thing to do is feel guilty. Well, that sucks. We're not meant to feel guilty. People might try to make you feel guilt to teach you a lesson, but guilt wastes immense amounts of time. There is NO good guilt. Period.

Yet, I struggle so. It's natural for me to feel, and I feel guilty for not feeling guilty after I have done wrong. I know I should put my energy in positive action instead of privately mourning a mistake, but sometimes it is impossible to figure out that plan of action. Or embarrassing. Or both.

Just a few minutes ago I feel a tingle on my foot and looked down to see a huge rhino beetle. I was filled with a quick stab of fear before gathering my wits, grabbing a paper, and escorting it outside. I opened the door as it scurried around the paper frantically. Scared it would make its way to my arm I shook it free immediately and it fell down to the sidewalk with a CRACK. The sound of it's little beetle exoskeleton smashing. CRACK. The tiny noise is haunting me. Why didn't I bend down? Why didn't I just bend down before shaking the paper? Is that little guy okay? Are his guts seeping through his back? Can he move at all? Maybe he bounced up with no harm, but I'll never know, and the horrid part about having a steel trap memory is that I probably will never forget. I still remember the moth my mother killed right in front of me when I was ten. I cried for an hour. The spiders I had to smash above my bunk bed at camp in 2003. The 17 years of meat I ate. The bunnies I couldn't help but touch whose mother abandoned them. The childhood lightening bugs dead in a jar on my window sill.