The Devil, it is often correctly noted, is in the details. We all have our particular weaknesses and very particular reasons we are weak exactly where and under what circumstances our weakness becomes excruciating. I’ve been chafing for years, for reasons I’ve gone into many times, when someone simply leaves their end of a conversation to silence. I’ve done conscious work on my reactions to this, which is about all one can do, but it’s a challenge for me even now, whenever it happens. And we all know, it happens all the time, especially with email.
I was gratified to see in the famous NY Times, in a review of books on how to deal with difficult people, that one respected author sets aside Silent and Non-responsive as one of seven supremely maddening types. For whatever reason, that type has learned: all I’ve got to do, motherfucker, is nothing. Hmmmmm? Is my humming bothering you? Hmmmmmmmm?
If a friend expresses annoyance that I didn’t reply to his description of an outburst of rage he described in an email he sent, I will read the email again and reply. Stepping neatly into the trap. Because then, heh…. what? I didn’t say anything. You’re fucking crazy. I did nothing and look how fucking mad you get!!!! Oh my God, and you think I was enraged because I said I was enraged when I totaled my car… what a complete fucking asshole you are, Mr. Ahimsa-Boy!
A few distinctions occur to me and are in order.
In defense of people with bad tempers who don’t want to think too deeply about why they fly off the handle from time to time, or suffer, like an expatriate friend, from all sorts of painful anger-repression related physical ailments, or live joyless lives seeing no reason to do anything but continue trudging out of a sense of duty, if you don’t lose your job over your temper, is it really that big a problem? True friends and loving family will often forgive you for an outburst of anger, bosses– not as much.
Also, the difference, I realize, between the rage that was directed at me (and my sister) by my abused father, at my friend by his enraged, quick to snarl and slap mother, and whatever bad treatment was meted out by other inept parents of adults we know, is that being raged at is a trauma that causes a different category of harm in the child than just being disrespected or treated thoughtlessly. Being the object of a parent’s rage from your earliest memories? Priceless.
Just ask my dad about that, though you’d need special powers to make out what his smiling skull would tell you up there in that little boneyard outside of Peekskill. If you had those special powers, the man could tell you a hell of a lot.
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