Posted at Techfluid

Posted on October 15, 2002 in Crosstalk

chari of the good karma wrote a long reflection on the effects of abuse. I don’t know if she had anyone particular in mind, but her descriptions of what was done to some people she knew fit me.

I replied:

I was one of the unlucky ones. I didn’t just have my parents, I also had a brother who was six years older than me who became a third parent. One of his favorite tricks was to misunderstand something I said and beat me up for it, either verbally or physically.

Last week, someone didn’t like what I said on my blog. She made a comment about “kicking me in the balls” for what I said (which was misinterpreted). It didn’t help that my defenses were down from having taken too much xanax in the course of the previous few days. I got mad and posted an angry public reply.


Sunday was horrible. I was still creaking along in my post-xanax nightmare when a friend of hers popped up at my site and began infering that I had said things that I had not. Looking back to the first paragraph, I am sure you can see why I developed the trigger. I responded angrily: it got worse as more people got involved, including the unrepentant woman who had started it all. They called me “humor-impaired”. I’d say that they are “empathy-impaired”.


In the end, a good friend talked me into taking the post down. It felt good to just walk out of the warzone. I do not know if my antagonists noticed or if they gloated when they saw it. I am free, for now. And, thankfully, I was smart enough not to take another xanax to roll through the crisis.


Thanks for posting this, chari. It’s hell when someone refuses to give a fuck and a blessing when someone does.

One observation. chari writes “Do we honestly think a child that is beat nightly will grow up believing anyone can love them?”

Nightly beatings are not necessary. What destroys self-confidence is the constant living in fear, of expecting something horrible to happen, of expecting people to be cruel or exclusive. I’ve grown up fearing the fear in others. I’ve never struck anyone in anger since Junior High School, but I’ve used my fingertips to good effect when I’ve felt the need to drive someone out of my life for good. I worry that people do not like me. This is my heritage.

I think what kindness people think they see in me — as well as what anger — comes from this long ago hurtfulness. It is most likely to strike when I have weakened my resolve in some way: too much xanax, skipping meals, bad news, too little rest all can make me loutish and reactionary. I am very sensitive to people who do something and then insist that they have done no such thing. Torturers, I read somewhere, use the technique of inflicting severe pain and then telling the victim “Oh, that didn’t hurt.” Sometimes I see torturers who use words doing this. I also react strongly to people ganging up on me. I do not always see the insignificance of their numbers. What I see is me as I was in my family, fighting alone for an identity.

The advice I give to friends of people like me is simply to understand that the pain never goes away. I can get along most of the time just fine. But now and then something weakens the usual defenses, I take a stupid statement too much to heart, I run into stubbornness on the part of an oaf, a gang forms, etc. and I blow. God help anyone in the way. The one thing I learn from such events is who I don’t want around when I get like that. And I also learn who are the true friends. They may hide from my wrath, but, pointedly, they do not add to it.

To the list of specials helps in the last paragraph of “Not Gratuitous Gratitude“, therefore, let me add the name of chari who made me realize that though I go crazy sometimes, I do not lose my right to call myself “human”. I walk towards Hope once more.