I guess I should give some frame of reference about where I live. I'm in a one year old condo building that we bought brand new, and that is a very nice place to be in. Across from us is a car dealership and some small crackshacks that are going to be torn down soon for a new apartment building. I'm in what is going to be a very nice neighborhood and what should be a very peaceful place in the evenings.
I turn off the tap water, walk over to the stereo and turn the TV down as well as the big fan we have blowing cold air in, meeting my wife at the deck door to figure out what the loud noise was .
Waiting.
More loud noise, screaming and yelling, what sounds like a paint can not being knocked over, but thrown multiple times all the while the neighbors dog barks like crazy. More crying.
Wife looks at me and tells me to call 911.
Hop on the cell, call 911 and talk to the police dispatch and let them know what we heard, let the police in via the buzzer, and try to listen and see if we're going to hear some more yelling from next door when the cops arrive.
Nothing. We heard nothing really. My wife only heard the guy tell someone to leave him alone soon after the police were there, as she was still out on the deck and cleaning. We of course wanted to make sure everything was ok, but we are neither close enough to our neighbors to go over and break up a domestic disturbance where the guy is yelling, and the girl is crying, nor are we armed enough to pull this off if the situation was at it's worst, so we let the police deal with it.
We kept quiet, and saw that there were 3 police vehicles outside, and they slowly left one after the other over the course of the next hour.
It would have been nice to know what the situation was. It's much like being in a war and being a triage nurse telling the doctor the symptoms that you've seen over the last 10 seconds, and that the doctor now has to assess the situation in an in depth manner knowing far more than you, but never sharing the details. I have to admit, my wife and I were hoping that the police would give us a follow up call, and let us know what happened. But no such call came.
If there's something that I hate, and I mean with such a passion that I have the potential to do serious harm if I come across someone committing the act of it and there's no witnesses, is spousal abuse. I despise people who have to take their anger out on others with violence. And not even so much that they are angry, but the releasing of that anger on another human, and one that he or she supposedly love. That's not any type of love that I've ever seen or experienced in my adult life*.
I do say adult life with an asterix after it for one simple fact - I've seen it occur with my mom and dad when I was young. I don't mean to say, or even lead the reader on that it was some type of horrible abusive situation where my mom was beat by my dad. It wasn't like that. But, I did see many types of anger and abuse. Abuse, I should also clarify that I mean any type of physical display that might be construed as, or is, destructive to person or property in nature. I've seen my dad do many things that were not something that I, or any other person that knows him would guess that he would do. I've seen him throw a book at my mom, a dog kennel at my childhood and teenaged year dog, and throw one of those circular baby bouncy activity centers at the floor and off a wall hard enough to crack the thick durable plastic. Those are a few of the more memorable things that have happened.
Let's say that he has a hard time accepting the fact that he might be wrong. It's that clear and simple. How do I know that? Well, I've also been on the receiving end of it. Heck, I'm 28 right now, and last New Years my wife and I were up there. My dad, little brother, and myself were playing a strategic board game that make Risk look like child's play. A game called Axis and Allies. A small argument came up about a movement that I made, and how it pertained to the rules. I knew that I was right according to the rules of the game, but as father knows best he wanted to make an issue of it. I asked for a reading of the rules, and was read them, and interpreted them in the way of the movement I had made. Well, dad turns passive aggressive and lets me have my way (ie, the way of the game rules, clear and precisely explained) and could see the look in my dad's eyes that he wished I was younger so he could tell me to take my glasses off so he could smack my face for "talking back". That's a rather general term, and could be implied that it's any opening of the mouth to let words out, even to just answer a question.
Being too old, and of course of greater physical capacity than my dad, he let me "off" on this one. But how often does this happen in other people's households where the person is let off with just enough life left to survive today's beating? How often is just letting someone "off" just short of a hospital visit, and just short of death. And how often does it go further than that?
Maybe I'm wise or foolish in my young age, depending on how you're reading this, but I don't think any one should be able to get off lightly with these types of attacks on another person.
How do I know? Having grown up with it, I've got it in my blood. My mom got beat by my grandpa when she was young. She put up with getting hit by a few objects so far in life with my dad. It stops there. I refuse to let it go past me, and my wife knows this.
But it doesn't generally start with beating someone. It'll start with striking a piece of furniture, throwing an object, uncontrollable screaming and yelling. Heck, it might even start with nothing.
It doesn't have to be that way though. Luckily in my case I'm smart enough to start thinking, and smart enough to do so in an introspective way. I remember being punished in my room with a spanking on the ass end, and then laying there in my bed punching myself in the head where I had hair that would cover the knots and bruises. No one was the wiser.
As I got older it was a compulsion to punch things that would hurt me, but not the object. A few of my first jobs involved working in kitchens with large walk in coolers and freezers, and when no one was around I would assault the walls with a fury no one would have expected. It was enough to bruise and bloody my knuckles many times over. There's a good reason that no one would have expected it though, I was the perfect teenager. I never drank, partied, smoked, got high, stayed out late, or did anything wrong. And if I got myself in trouble at home for something that no one else would get in trouble for, I'd punish myself in the walk in cooler. Those walls received a thousand punches, I swear. I internalized my feelings, and took the feelings of hate that I perceived from my dad and took them out on myself for being a failure, a nobody. That internalization led to a lot of anger that essentially exploded inside and nuked part of my memory. There are a lot of things that I wish I remember from my teen years, but I can't due to the anger that blinded me internally, and the blood that scarred my knuckles.
It starts like that for a lot of people who are going to be hereditary abusers since they're looking to have the person undergoing the punishment that is being handed out to feel the pain that they've "caused" the abuser. I could have followed this route, but I realized early on that there was something illogical in this. That there was something that didn't make sense with taking someone you love and beating them lifeless, let alone just striking them once out of anger. I wanted to make sure that any cycle of abuse that started way down the lines in each side of the family tree didn't make it's way through to me.
I absolutely abhor abuse. I don't think that any intellectual should have to stoop to this level. I think that everyone, especially those with an average and better Intelligence Quotient should be able to do things in a civilized manner.
I remember one time early on in my marriage when I got made at my wife, and I walked away closing the bedroom door, took my glasses off, and threw them across the room. There was a time a few months later we were again having an argument when it got so heated that I yelled at her at the top of my lungs. After those two incidents I made myself some promises.
- Nothing is worth getting that worked up about.
- An intellectual should be able to be civilized and able to talk the issue out.
- If I ever got too mad internally, I would walk away so that I would not take any impending explosion out on my wife.
I've been fine ever since. In fact, over the last 7 years of marriage I've driven my wife nuts since I always try to make up as soon as an argument happens. I've had to learn that I have to give her time to think clearly, as her emotions get in the way at that point, where I just shut mine off to an extent and try to fix things from there. I have not since blown up, or been angry enough that I would ever want to cause her pain. After all, I'm in the process of stopping a cycle of taking anger out on others with words or violence. That's not to say that there isn't a good verbal rant at some point or another, but that I'm civil in the way that I approach things when anger strikes.
As I said, I abhor abusive relationships. My wife knows, and believes me that when we're watching COPS and it's an abusive situation where someone has had another's anger put on his or her shoulders and I tell her that if I ever come across the aggressor in the act of violence against someone in his or her dominion, heaven help that person. Being not of small stature and larger than the average male in mass, I would explain in non-intellectual terms to that person beating up another that it is not ok. Only I would tell them with the very thing I hate.
My own fist, and anger.
Speaking of anger, I'm hungry. I'm going to get some more chow mein and then head for sleep. The irony you're looking for in this? Tonight's bombshell? A cracka' makes a "Chinese" dish and the Chinese neighbors beat each other to a pulp, or so it sounded. Maybe I should make "Mexican" tomorrow night and see if my car ends up on air bags with spinners and a huge system all the while everyone talking to me calls me "mang".
Unfortunecookily yours,
Matt
No comments:
Post a Comment