Kicking against the pricks

I related to this recent comment from UKan in response to a question, "why did you say you must have been a little lost?"

Because violence became my obsession and it cost me years of my life. Everything seemed so right, so I couldn't understand why I kept going in and out of facilities. I felt like they were persecuting me. I didn't figure it out till my last year in prison. Even then I couldn't put the brakes on because I had been going down the hill so fast for so long. I'm still trying to hold the brakes. I've had a few incidents in a year span, but I think I've slowed down a bit. 

I know most people think it seems simple. If you keep getting arrested for violent deeds, it should be easy to see why you are getting jammed. In my mind everything was not only justified, but I projected myself on everyone. Consequently I thought they thought it was ok too, but they were just jamming me up because they wanted to keep me down. I don't know if you understand. Like I said I was lost. Delusional even.

When I studied music, we looked at the composition below. The text of the piece is from the New Testament. Jesus appears to Saul, the persecutor of Christians, saying "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."  What Jesus meant is that it was difficult for Saul to continue doing the same (self) destructive stuff over and over again.

I knew exactly what the angel meant.  I had done this so many times in my life, diving headlong into some hare-brained scheme or another, and repeating my mistakes over and over again like a moron.  I would provoke the people in my life until they erupted, then provoke them again until they erupted, then provoke them again until they erupted.  It was like I was a skipping record.  I finally hit a sort of rock bottom and straightened out quite a bit, but I'm still susceptible to getting stuck in these sorts of ruts.  I wish I knew what it was about me that made me so susceptible to this self-defeating behavior.