Allegedly

by Tiffany D. Jackson

Hard to celebrate the day you were born when everybody seems to wish you were never born at all.

Figures of speech are luxuries convicted murderers are not allowed to have.

We requested the official documentation and reports from her original diagnoses, but no one could provide the information. This led us to question whether she was ever tested at all.

One of the first traits of a psychopath is narcissism. The term comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, the boy who fell in love with his own image in a pool of water. Note that the boy doesn’t fall in love with himself, but with the actual image reflected back at him. This is what psychologist Theodore Millon describes as “compensatory narcissism.” When people feel insecure, they create a grand self-image in an attempt to compensate for what is lacking internally. They present this façade to the world in order to hide the emptiness they feel, thus falling in love with the idea of themselves. But, if you threaten their self-image—threaten to expose the thing they love most, themselves—they will react, often in a hostile manner.

But I’m only the weakest part of angry; I’m hurt. Hurt makes you want to lay in the middle of the street, dead on the ground, muscles gone limp.

Our eyes meet, both knowing it ain’t that simple to give up on people you love that don’t love you the same.

“What yuh may or may not’ve done is not di definition of who yuh really are.”