Losing faith…

I have lost my faith.  I realized this astonishing fact yesterday.  I’m taking it rather hard.  No, I didn’t lose my faith in God.  God is about the only thing I still have faith in, God and Irony.  I have lost my faith in people.

I have always been the type of person who believed that, yes, people can, and do, tend to be petty, small-minded, mean-spirited, and self-absorbed at times, but, on a whole, people are inherently good.  People have good intentions, good souls, they just occasionally make bad choices.  I have always believed that. Yes, there are those few exceptions, the people who are truly evil (murderers, serial killers, sociopaths), but the are few.  People as a whole are good.

I have always believed that people start out good, our experiences in life just tend to shape and tarnish that goodness from time to time.  But, at the end of it all, goodness will triumph.  I have built my entire belief system, moral code, life, upon this one very basic, fundamental principle that I believe to be absolute.

My foundation has crumbled.  I realized yesterday that I no longer believe that people are good.  People are petty, selfish, small-minded, narcissistic, self-absorbed, mean-spirited… and occasionally they may make a good choice or decision.  I know believe that truly good people may be the exception to the rule, of any of them even exist anymore.  And I am not so sure they do.  I believe that goodness is dying out in the world.  Once those few good people die, that is it.  There will be no more.  My faith in humanity has been tested, and failed.

I no longer have a foundation.  I am floundering to find solid footing, a hold, to keep from tumbling into the never-ending abyss.  I keep reaching, grasping, and clinging to hand holds only to have them crumble in my hands.  I am at a loss.  I have finally truly experienced disillusionment.

No, I am not suicidal.  I would never consider it. Even at my darkest moment, that is not on the horizon.  As I have said, I still have faith in God.  I am just struggling to find the light, the happiness, the good in the world.  I wonder if this is what purgatory will be like, or if it will be much, much worse.  Is this hell?