Vachon Imagined

Let’s talk about sociopaths for a second.

Sociopathy, in its simplest pop-definition, gets described as: someone who knows the difference between right and wrong but does what they want anyway.

No brakes. No conscience. No consequences—at least in theory.

Now before anyone starts googling “signs I am a sociopath” and booking a therapist for emergency moral evaluation, stick with me.

Because if we’re honest, that definition starts to sound a little too familiar.

When I was in eighth grade, a group of girls threatened to cut off my hair—Rapunzel style.

Now you may ask, why would they do that?

And the answer is the same answer behind most human behavior:

Because they wanted to.

Desire shows up, and the body moves toward it.

Voila. That will be $200. Please pay my secretary on the way out.

Anyway.

At about 4’11 on a good day and roughly 85–90 pounds soaking wet, I did what any rational eighth grader would do when facing what felt like imminent war.

I fought back.

I grabbed scissors from a teacher’s desk and prepared to return the favor.

Three of them. One of me. Not exactly a tactical advantage, but logic was not leading the meeting that day.

Let’s call it enthusiasm.

As a side note, also in eighth grade, my highly sophisticated criminal enterprise—made up of me and my friends—once took candy from a teacher’s desk and then attempted to hide behind said desk when we got caught.

That was an in-school suspension waiting to happen. Beautiful work all around.

But here’s the point.

Even then, I knew the difference between right and wrong.

And I still did what I wanted.

Because that’s what humans do more often than we like to admit.

We do what we want, and then we build a story about who we are afterward.

“I would never do that.”

“I’m a good person.”

“I always make the right choice.”

My favorite, from years in law enforcement: “I would never hurt anyone.”

And I believe people believe it.

But under the right conditions—right pressure, right fear, right humiliation, right desire—human behavior becomes far more flexible than our identity is willing to admit.

The mind prefers clean lines.

Good people. Bad people. Safe people. Dangerous people.

Order feels safe.

Chaos feels like something that belongs to someone else.

So we construct a self that is tidy.

Controlled.

Predictable.

“I am good.”

And then we spend a lifetime defending that story.

Because what threatens us most is not wrongdoing.

It is inconsistency in the self-image.

When that image is questioned, something inside reacts immediately.

Not because we are evil.

But because the story of “me” is being disturbed.

And we will fight for that story harder than we will sometimes fight for truth.

Here’s the uncomfortable part:

Behavior is situational.

Identity is retrospective.

And morality, most of the time, is a story we tell after the fact to make ourselves feel continuous.

So when you place the world back on yourself—when you stop trying to be “a type of person” and start noticing what actually happens—you begin to see something unsettling and freeing at the same time.

Human beings are far more fluid than they admit.

Not monsters.

Not saints.

But movement.

Desire moving.

Fear moving.

Protection moving.

Love moving.

Control moving.

And once you see that clearly, something changes.

You stop needing to be “good” in the way the mind defines it.

You stop building tiny cells of identity to live inside.

And strangely, that is where responsibility actually begins.

Because you are no longer defending a character.

You are aware of the movement itself.

And awareness can interrupt it.

It can pause it.

It can redirect it.

Not through moral performance—but through presence.

You don’t become a sociopath.

You become less fictional.

And in that space, something else becomes available.

Not control.

Not superiority.

But choice that is not hijacked by story.

Power that does not need to be declared.

Love that is not trying to prove it is good.

Just life, seeing itself clearly enough not to be fully run by its own narrative.

And yes.

That includes everyone.

Even the sociopath.