I Am a Thief

I am a thief.

I didn't always know I was a thief, or start out as one, for that matter. I was raised properly, with morals and the notion of right and wrong, good versus evil, the whole nine yards, as it were. The thing is, it wasn't a conscious effort; I wasn’t aware of it for a long time. Turns out, I am that person. I’m as bad as they say I am.

It started small. I’d see or hear something from someone, maybe not even directly, and then I'd repeat it like it had given me inspiration. Sort of like a quote, you know? People love quotes. People like sounding smarter or cooler than they really are. They use them as a bridge—a way of finding common ground, getting a laugh, or imparting knowledge. Course, I never credited the speaker; I pawned everything off as my own. If I got called out, no big deal. You just be honest. Tell them you heard it somewhere. No thoughts are ever in a vacuum if you demonstrate them outside your head. If imitation is a form of flattery, theft should be the greatest honor.

I was always the class clown, the star of the show even if I didn’t take center stage. I was fine watching and waiting, but when the spotlight was on me, I ate it up. I started stealing time—as much of it as I could. I liked being looked up to, like I knew what I was talking about. Truth is, I know about as much as anyone else. The problem is that I'm articulate and speak well. People confuse that with intelligence. I knew logically that all those “quotes” I'd been using couldn't be true; there had to be a few instances where I was regurgitating a lie. Turns out? I didn’t actually care which side of the coin it landed on. There was a certain devilish thrill to lying to someone and having them believe it, even on a small scale. 

I started spinning versions of the truth, landing close but embellishing where I could to see if I could get a rise. I did. It became a game where I could tell other people's stories better than they could. I'd punch up the moment, milk it for dramatic effect, or stall to let a laugh build—whatever the story called for. People were fine taking a backseat to their own melodrama, free to enjoy it for what I saw it as, never ones to contradict me lest they lessen their own mythos.

After that, I realized I could steal moments. Why should I be on time for anything? Let the world wait on me instead of me waiting on the world. It was powerful. Calculated, subtle, intentional. Late for a date, late for work, late for whatever I thought I could get away with. Small. You can't go heavy-handed at first, because if you do, they'll axe you. No—you build trust, establish that you're a good guy, a great person, dependable and reliable, all the things that they think make a model human. At times, it even makes you believe you are a good person. You’re doing good things, right? You go to work. You pay your bills. You make your way through school. But inside the hall of mirrors, where you can see every version of yourself—all the potential, wasted or realized, and all the cumulative choices up until then—you know it's only a matter of time before you disappoint everyone. 

There's something inside you you can't face.

The mirrors will crack; the cards will fall.

Moments weren't enough. The narcissist inside of me needed to evolve, needed to be fed. Stealing moments evolved into stealing emotions. They seemed like the perfect pairing: peanut butter and jelly. When I was the center of the universe, I had everyone's attention, and I could get them to laugh, cry, or feel rage. Once I knew I had their emotions—something so fragile that I knew exactly which strings to pull for what reaction—I became a manipulator. I didn't even know it had happened. 

I was dating someone, someone who I genuinely knew was a great person and who said she saw me for who I was. The months were great; the years, not so much. She said she didn't like how I acted when I was mad, when we disagreed, when we vehemently fought. I only saw red, only heard the blood pounding in my ears. She would say that I verbally attacked her, cutting her down in the worst of ways in order to avoid my issues, to avoid taking responsibility for my side of things. She said I wasn't such a nice guy—not the person I present myself as. 

And when we had our worst fight, the one that ended our relationship, do you know what intoxicated me? The idea that I could steal ideas. I victimized myself. Blamed everything and everyone that wasn't me in the most pitiful of ways, shedding crocodile tears while I watched my ex's face crumble. She cried, then she cried some more, blaming herself for what happened, for how I reacted, for the things she said, convincing herself it was all her fault. If only we could just work on things together, she could get better.

I ended that relationship having stolen her idea of me being the bad guy. You don't actually have to be good if everyone around you thinks you are, right? 

It was nearing the end of college when we broke up. I dormed with a guy who was great people—a real inspirational type, a guy who knew what he wanted out of life and was in the process of making it happen. We'd talked about life, careers, the pursuit of things and what we wanted. He was the type of guy you would quote. He was working on an idea, wanting to be a novelist or a screenwriter—the sort where you’d read or watch one of his stories and be completely rapt with attention. The guy was creative as all hell, but not business-savvy; he didn't know how to get things done in this world.

I did.

I'm not going to lie: I was second-guessing myself. I didn't know it at the time, but everything beforehand had been done subconsciously, automatically, like I was just going through the motions. Autopilot. I still believed that I wasn't such a bad guy. Strange what lengths we'll go to in order to protect our ego. But this would be different. This would be intentional. Impersonally personal: stealing someone else's idea. Not changing it, but outright taking it. Ideas are a dime a dozen; originality, though, sometimes only comes once in a lifetime. My roommate's idea was truly his own. I remember thinking, “There's no going back now.” 

It didn't stop me. I stole it. I produced his short film as if it were my own, tweaking the idea just enough that I had some deniability. I found people more skilled than myself that were willing to see the idea brought to life, all behind my roommate’s back. 

It came together spectacularly. I screened it at the college film festival. Me—a guy with no background in film who had a vision of what film could be. The audience loved me, the faculty adored me, and my roommate despised me. He called it the ultimate betrayal. I denied everything. It was easy to pit everyone against him. I remained quiet at first, letting the fire burn unchecked for a while. But when the time was right, I dropped subtle hints about my roommate—little breadcrumbs that made it seem like he always had the wrong take on things, possessed an insatiable jealousy of others, and worse, a skewed sense of reality. 

I said I felt sorry for him. I didn't express any hostility. I admitted that we had talked long hours many nights about that very idea, just spitballing like old friends, or so I thought. I said I couldn't put my finger on when he came to believe it was his idea. Surely, if it had been his own, he would have made it by then? For my roommate, it was like fighting the tide. Some people think a tide lifts all boats; I think it sinks the weak ones. 

I realized that I didn't want to play by the rules. I didn't want to be a boat, or even a ship, for that matter. I wanted to be the tide itself—the wave that crushed others beneath it. In order to do so, I would need to get to the top, and once there, it would only be a matter of keeping everyone beneath me. I was drawn to film not out of creativity, not out of imagination, not out of any sort of artistry, but by the sheer notion that I could steal on a much grander scale. I would rip off all the greats before me, take the best of their ideas, and craft something that I could pass off as my own. They say history repeats itself: it does. Given enough time, people forget. We all have short memories, especially when we're lying to ourselves. 

I began releasing short after short, film after film, and established myself as a working writer and director. People flocked to me. I had charisma. I got things done. That's honestly all it took. Sure, I was a hard worker—there's no denying that. But I'd say the Devil works pretty hard too, so work ethic doesn’t exactly factor in, does it?

Years went by, and with them, none of the relationships I had stuck, personal or professional. It was the one area that always crashed against reality. Given enough time, I'd always reveal myself. Most people back down when faced with confrontation; a lot of them I could even convince it was their fault, turning my words to honey, since you catch more flies that way. When that didn’t work, I'd go scorched earth, burn them to the ground and make it so they could never bother me again. I didn't realize I was burning my own bridges at the same time. When you're head’s in the clouds, you can't see the forest or the trees. 

Victimizing myself worked less and less. When you have fame, fortune, and prestige, it's a little harder to play the pity card, especially when your misdeeds begin to become well known. Like I said earlier, nothing happens in a vacuum. It might take years, but your past will always catch up with you no matter how fast or far you run, because you can't escape yourself.

It took me a long time to admit I am a thief. At first, I was disgusted. I had denied it for so long, argued so hard that I wasn't what they all said I was. When it was only a few people, I could attack them personally and adamantly deny anything they said—anything to preserve the identity I had created, that I stood on the shoulders of giants, a version of myself cobbled together from a multitude of others. As time went on, though, I was no longer the tide, no longer the crashing waves. I wasn't even a boat. I was a life raft: adrift and alone, lost at sea with no one looking for me, no one coming to rescue me because I had pushed everyone away all for the sake of looking self-important. 

Alone and abandoned, I finally had to recognize that what everyone said about me was true.

I'm not a nice guy.

I am a thief.