Loud Triggers

Ever since I was a kid, listening to people yelling, either at me or around me, kind of became the norm. Add that to the fact that I grew up in a foster home and to be sure , you know that some sort of complication would arise somewhere down the line. Being treated less than, kind of grew weary, even for me. And to make matters worse being called a, “Son of a Whore” or, “you little Bastard” became all too familiar. Just for the record, my mother was married when I was born, so that doesn't make me a “Bastard”. But in the eyes of the “Caregivers” this was what I was, and I wore that cloak of shame silently. Somewhere deep inside of me, a dark, silent rage was growing but I carefully kept it bundled tight. Years passed. I spent a very short period of my life (8 months to be exact) living with my father, his then girlfriend and her two daughters. Needless to say, things were no better there. As a matter of fact, they were a little worse. One of my father's most famous lines was, “I brought you into this world...and I can take you right back out”. Couple that with the fact that he had loaded weapons in the house, and you tend to take that a little more seriously. There were a few times I wanted to intentionally provoke him just to see if he would do it. Maybe a little irrational, but my only thought was finding a permanent escape from the only kind of life I knew. And to me, that would have been welcome at the time.

I think this was around the time I started to develop what a friend would describe as , “The Death Look”. It's kind of like a hard, icy, venomous glare. It's like all those feelings that I consumed as a child and had kept tightly wrapped would emit some kind of a dark ray from my soul and through my eyes. This was my way of letting somebody know, very quietly, that they just crossed my boundaries and it's not acceptable. This was what I resorted to instead of yelling. First off, I don't do confrontations very well. If I speak up verbally, it's probably a good thing and I only do it if I feel like my inner child is being attacked. Certain people have had an unbelievable knack of knowing just exactly what buttons to push to send me off the deep end. Then, I absolutely lose it on them. My old boss was like that. He had a way of abusing his power and constantly making people feel like dirt beneath his feet. Whenever he would attack one of the people I was responsible for, I would confront him and lash out at him with a fury. Believe me, it's not something I'm proud of but I just couldn't stand watching his behavior go unchallenged. I paid for it with my job, but to me, it was worth it.

Whenever I hear yelling or even when I feel a confrontation coming on, I tend to get really, really quiet. It's like something inside of me is preparing for a storm and barricading the windows and doors. I felt like that for most of today because of an early morning incident at work. It had nothing to do with me personally, but just because I heard them yelling on the phone in such an abusive way, it kind of shut me down. At lunch, I brought it up with the person I overheard (I'm trying to be very discreet here) and asked them whether they thought that was appropriate behaviour. Their response was, “in this business it is”. They feel that some people deserve to be yelled at like that. That they are used to doing the yelling so he feels that it is necessary for him to balance it out. Well, I can honestly say that this particular person is not used to being yelled at either and somehow, I don't think he would accept that from anybody. It amazes me what some people find as accept in today's society. You would think by now we would have tried on the other persons shoes from time to time just to feel what it is like to suffer that kind of abuse.

There are other kinds of abuse that I find equally disturbing. One of them is the fine art of the mind game. There are so many formats for this particular game it is hard to keep track of them. Suffice it to say, some of the people who play this game, know exactly what the rules are and they generally play it with a win at all cost attitude. I've had this game played on me more than I care to discuss and needless to say there have been many severed friendships and relationships because of it. It's not always out in the open so at first you don't notice the subtleties but eventually there is a slip and whammo....nailed again. Of course there are innocent formats of the mind game and people tend to play that like a game of chess. But then there are the malicious versions whereby somebody is trying to gain the upper hand on an emotional level, playing a card that is downright mean. These are definitely people I could do very well to stay away from. I've done my damnedest to treat people the best way I know how . And that is how I too would like to be treated.

Personally, I don't think it is asking for too much, but in a society bent on preying on those who's defenses have been weakened by life, where do we draw the line in the sand? I can't understand why the fine art of honest, respectable communication has become a thing of the past. Why can't people just tell it like it is and be done with it? What has happened to the respect we should be showing each other whether in business or otherwise. Why must communication be performed at the decibel level of a Rock Concert? I know one thing, there are games that I have outgrown as a child and there are games I can do without as an adult.