Malevolent Benevolence or Benevolent Malevolence-Which Poison Would You Choose?
It's a question that has haunted me ever since I first learned of Mother Myre.
As a child, whenever I cried too loud, disobeyed too sharply, or dared to push against invisible lines drawn around me, my parents would whisper her name like a curse.
Mother Myre will come for you, they said.
She'll take you away from us. She'll do terrible things to you.
In their words, she became a living shadow that lurked just beyond the threshold of my world, waiting for my smallest mistake to claim me.
For years, I lived in fear-fear crafted carefully, fear born of a lie.
Because as I grew older, I discovered the truth: Mother Myre wasn't real, at least not in the way they said. She wasn't a monster. Not really.
The old legends told a different story.
Mother Myre did not snatch children away to hurt them. She stole them to care for them-to wrap them in endless, suffocating love.
A cage made of velvet, not of iron.
A poison sweet enough that you might never know you were dying.
And so the question rises again:
Would you rather be broken by malevolent benevolence or betrayed by benevolent malevolence?
My parents hurt me under the illusion of doing good. They spun fear into armor and called it love. Their intentions were noble, but the scars were real.
That is benevolent malevolence: cruelty baptized by good intentions, pain disguised as protection.
Mother Myre offers the opposite.
She would love me fiercely, desperately, even destructively.
Her arms would be warm, but her grip would be iron. Her affection would rot into chains.
That is malevolent benevolence: kindness that smothers, care that corrodes, devotion that quietly unravels the soul.
So which would I choose?
I would choose the sweetness of destruction over the bitterness of betrayal.
I would rather be loved too much than be hurt in the name of saving me.
At least in malevolent benevolence, there is no pretense-no false righteousness. The harm is real, but it comes from a heart that believes in its love, however twisted that love may be.
Benevolent malevolence, by contrast, offers pain behind a smiling mask. It teaches you that those who hurt you do so because they "know better." That your suffering is somehow your own fault, for not understanding the wisdom of your wounds.
Give me the love that drowns.
Give me the kindness that kills softly.
Better the lover who clutches me too tightly than the protector who shatters me while claiming to save me.
In the end, both poisons are lethal.
But I would rather die knowing I was adored-however ruinously-than live broken by those who wounded me in the name of virtue.