“I hope he dies. I hope he dies because no one loves you. You’re ugly and unlovable, you are going to have the same thing happen to you, because you are worthless. Don’t cry little woman it ruins your complexion”
Head-locked underneath someone’s arm the kicking started, the pain is terrible and there is no escape. Some of the kicks hit the target, others go right to the prostate, it doesn’t stop. It feels like hours, it feels like there is no point carrying on, it is just another day. Let it happen, take the high road, do the right thing, there is honour in truth, good will prevail.
But it does not.
Thirty years have passed since it started, twenty-five since it finished. Their faces look back through social media, smiling, surrounded by family in luxury places, happy children, laughing, successful. There is no sorrow, none of the promised destitution, none of the promised bitterness, none of the failure that is bound to happen to those that do the wrong thing. They did it all, and now they have it all.
Some thought deep inside a damaged brain hopes that their children go through it. That they have to look at their child not eating, shaking in a corner, becoming an over the top mess desperate to be loved, looking for acceptance anywhere it can be found, hoping the laughs will avoid another beating or being made a fool of in public yet again. That maybe the prophecy of those being cruel actually having some sort of comeuppance is real, but it is not.
The answer is always along the lines of “It happens to you because you’re too kind. You’re too nice! You need to harden up because it’s a cruel world.”
Thus all actions no matter how bad are justified along the lines of – if you were exactly what every moral code tells you not to be, if you don’t follow the peaceful teaching we have been ramming down your throat since you were able to talk, if you go against that, then maybe you won’t get beaten, ridiculed, spat on and your head shoved into a toilet. The logic of these statements goes beyond any poor understanding of the world at large.
Let go, it doesn’t change anything, and they don’t care anyway.
Stories from the Fig Tree 