forgive them

/Forgive them, Father. They know not what they do./

I don't know why that passage stuck out to me so much. It was in the little black book with a faux-leather cover that an old man on the street gave to me. I didn't stop to ask him what it was or why I needed it, because there was that familiar fucking patronizing look in his eyes. If it's not hatred, it's pity, and after too long one turns into the other. Hard to tell what's worse. It was turning my stomach, so I had to leave. But I kept the book. Might as well read that too.

It wasn't before I recognized what this book was. Its characters and messages had been echoed in most of the things I'd read up to that point in some way or another, and for a while it was interesting to finally see the source Something that had such a massive impact on the culture I was wading through, trying to understand.

But then I read this passage. And I nearly tore the damn thing in half.

Of course they knew what they were doing, I thought. I was smart enough to know that people could tell right from wrong, and yet where I was concerned, I was outside of decency. Undeserving. They would come to revere the man being tortured and murdered in this book as a martyr, a savior, the cornerstone for movements that would shake the entire world.

Where would be my redemption? My mark, if I would never become more than garbage to these people? There would be no saving me.
I'm glad that, for once, I didn't act so rashly. It was the fire and choler talking, getting angry over nothing. Rationality took over. How could I ever explain to them what I am? A body, without a soul and kept alive by fire, with angels at my heels, pushing me towards a dawn I'm not even sure will ever come?

They don't understand me because they can tell I am not one of them, in a way that not even they themselves recognize. It isn't fair to me, but at the same time... is it fair to them, either? I've seen the looks in their eyes when I leave. The confusion and upset at how they'd reacted. They'd never treat a real person like that.

But I am not real.

Not yet.

And there will be no savior for me except for myself.

I still have the book somewhere, though I've never really seen the need to revisit it. But I still carry that phrase with me, and sometimes when it gets to be too much, I remember that line and I say it quietly to myself.

Forgive them, Candy. They know not what they do.