Every Cat Is Gray

          I spend an embarrassing amount of time obsessing over the idea of being “good.”

          Good in the moral sense, the cosmic sense, the stupid mundane sense of doing no harm, making no mess, causing no disturbance. A harmless creature. A quiet creature. A well-behaved little critter.

          But the problem is that “good” doesn’t exist.

          If morals are subjective, then good is subjective, and anything subjective might as well be imaginary. If everyone sees different shades of gray, then none of the gray matters. My “good” might be someone else’s “bad,” and someone else’s “meh,” and someone else’s “I don’t care.”

          It all dissolves under the light. That fact drives me insane. Though, insanity is subjective too, isn’t it? How convenient.

          I learned early that the only reliable way to be good was to mirror, reflect whatever someone else needed to see. Be the exact temperature and texture of the room, bend my shape until it fit in the mold someone else left behind. A chameleon in a house of shifting wallpaper. If morals shift from person to person, then so shall I. That’s how you stay safe, that’s how you stay “good.”

          But now I’m told that if I want to be healthy, I have to stop. Stop mirroring, stop performing goodness like it’s a talent show routine.

          Which leaves me with a problem: If mirroring was the only way to be good, and I stop mirroring... that makes me bad, no?

          An absence of good is bad, an absence of light is dark. Very simple, very stupid, very ingrained.

          I keep circling the same thought process. If every person has a different idea of good, then every version I try on is both right and wrong at the same time.

          Schrödinger’s morality, and Schrödinger’s me.

          Every cat is gray in the dark, and it’s getting dark in here.

          Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the trick is realizing that no one gets to be good, not truly. You just get to exist, you just are.