Yeah. Honestly, we never had much of a problem with our conscience with stealing from large chain stores.
But stealing from individuals, and small individually owned businesses where it would hurt an individual person. That was hard on our conscience.
We did it cause we were so desperate. But still, we knew it was wrong. We'd cope with it by trying not to think about it or talk about it. And by letting ourselves believe we were just bad people. We knew what regular normal society would think about us and it was easier to just tell ourselves what they'd think of us was simply true. That we were bad people and deserved bad things to happen to us.
Like I said before, most of the time you'd think we really didn't care. Cause we'd talk about it like it was the most casual ordinary thing in the world. One time, something we did made the news. Slow news day I guess. It was just a segment covering Easter and it mentioned about how not everyone was well behaved for some event we were at and they were talking to this guy who had had a large amount of money stolen from him. I'm fairly sure they were talking about us. We were there that day and we stole that money. That exact amount in that place at that time. So they had to be talking about us. My and the guy I did this shit with.
That made me feel pretty shitty. I thought about telling him about what I'd seen on the news but I didn't. Cause I knew it would hurt him, and what would be the point? We had already spent the money and it was a crime of opportunity so it wouldn't have been feasible to repay him. But yeah I felt pretty shitty for it.
The main reason I felt so bad about it was cause of how happy I was that we'd done it at the time. We saw the opportunity, it was just chance, so we took it. And it covered our drugs for both of us for the whole day. So we were both pretty happy at the time. We were worried about getting enough money for our drugs that day so when we saw the opportunity to steal the money and saw it was enough to cover us for the whole day and then some, we were both so relieved and happy we didn't have much time to feel bad for how some innocent person just paid the price for us. Which is what I mean, if you were a fly on the wall watching us then you'd have thought we were horrible heartless people. That we just took this guys money for our drug habit and didn't give a shit how it would have hurt them.
Heroin addiction does bad shit to your conscience.
Point is though, it's all a coping mechanism. We cared. We knew it was wrong, we knew we were hurting people and we went to a lot of effort to try and get money without hurting anyone. We might have been too relieved at the time to feel bad about it, but I felt pretty horrible for it the next day especially after seeing it on the news. And I know it bothered him too. And most of the time we were successful with getting money without hurting people, but every now and then we found ourselves with few options but to do something that would hurt someone. And we knew we would keep doing it so we just put it out of our minds.
So yeah, watching us you'd have thought we didn't care at all. That we were immoral lying stealing junkies. And that's how we thought about ourselves too. But we weren't. It hurt us a lot how much suffering we were causing. And we certainly weren't lazy. Most of our time and effort went because we were desperately trying to get money without hurting people. If we truly didn't care we could have just stolen all the time and it would have been a lot easier.
I think that's a lot of the reason we never felt bad about stealing or people stealing from large chain stores or begging for money. Most of our money came from pan handling. And that involved lots of lying too. But we never felt bad about it. Not cause we thought it was ok but just cause it was so minor and harmless compared to our alternatives.
In my experience this describes most criminals. There are some assholes out there that just like it. They do it even if they don't have too. Neither of us had any time or respect for those kinds of people. But most criminals we knew were like us. Acting out of desperation and feeling like shit for it. Trying to cope using shitty justifications or just not talking about it at all. And the drugs of course. The drugs helped a lot.
I vividly remember thinking about how we looked so normal. People would just see us and think we were just a normal young couple with no idea what we'd done and what we were capable of. And I'd think about how disgusted they would be with us if they knew the truth. People have no idea the criminal element going on right in front of them.
We all have our own moral codes. Even for all the bad shit we did, we had no time for people who REALLY didn't care, who'd tell stories about crimes they'd committed or supposedly committed like they were showing off. People who'd steal even when they had other options when we would go to so much effort to avoid hurting people. We both hated that shit.
I generally tried harder than he did to talk about what we were doing. Cause well, there aren't many people who will be able to relate to this kinda shit and what we were going through. But he'd never want to talk about it. And generally I wouldn't push it. As is usually the case with these kind of running partnerships where it's a guy and a girl, he tried to protect me from getting too involved in criminal shit. So he was usually more directly responsible for what we did when it came to this kinda thing. I'm certainly not innocent. But it meant I didn't want to push him to talk about it when it was bothering me.
We both tried to protect each other, and we both tried not to think about it most of the time. But I definitely felt more compelled to talk about it than he did.
Why can't guys talk about shit? I've had this problem with every guy I've ever been with. They won't fucking talk about emotional problems.