Blame

Three weeks ago, a significant sum of my health project’s money walked out of my house. Six days ago, a key to my house went missing.

I grew up with two older siblings. And I went through my fair share of accusing people who weren’t people of things that I had, in fact, messed up or lost myself. It took many years for me to realize that someone else probably didn’t care to wear that brown t-shirt I couldn’t find or moved my cellphone to the place where I now couldn’t find it or had used the part of my eye shadow that appeared to missing.

Here, though, there are so many people that move in and out of my house or are just in such close proximity to me at all times that another person borrowing my shirt or moving my cellphone or walking out of my house with my extra house key is a distinct possibility.

At least, that’s what I told myself when I accused my neighbor’s kids of taking the later.

They were not amused. (I overheard them talking about me that night) It seemed that it only took one incident (losing my money) to me to revert back to how I used to act when I was younger and still found it easier to blame others rather than myself when things went wrong here. And things go wrong here a lot: people disappear right when I need their signature on a form, the electricity goes out when I need to make photocopies for my class, I fall and scuff up my knee when I’m already late for class. And unfortunately, recently, I’ve been reverting back to blaming the health center director, the people at the electric company and the uneven road when, really, the problems sometimes lie within myself.

I found the key at the bottom of my bag two days ago.