The failure of the inferior man

They say, do not reason with your woman. She is like the ocean, like the weather. Chaos is her constant state. To require her to be in control of her emotions and words is to demand of the horse to hold its own reins, to sit in its own saddle--and still be its wild, unpredictable self. Your woman only wants love. Even in her most extreme expression, a hug will balance the scales and return her to her true loving nature. And the man will be expressing his mastery of self and his woman.

Which is what I haven't been doing.

The most dangerous position for me to be in is having the person who is most upset with me, declaring me the aggressor, reaching out to me and wanting to be close. To be mashed up in the swamp of hoped-for intimacy and current bad feelings and recently-passed harsh words is already complicated for my inferior, aimless constitution. Then to be given the instruction that all will be better if you just hug me, is beyond beyond.

I have so vilified my perpetrator state, am so out of rapport with the part of me I like least and am told I am most, that I am constantly running the feelings of despair and hatred. To be required to be close to my woman, with her pleading outstretched arms and splayed desperate fingers, after she has seen and named me at my worst asks me to be most vulnerable to myself and to her when I am at my most hurt and unstable.

I am asked to lie to myself, betraying my known means of protecting myself from my father's attempts to kill me and my mother's offering herself to be murdered in my place. But, for lack of mercy, nobody actually dies. The danger swells and peaks unconsummated. Shame and impotence descend and the skies clear until the next time. All the while I pray for my guts to spill at my feet so that the someone can complete the experience of this pain, and that something different can happen instead.

But instead of manifesting this or a better solution, I am swept with the tide. I retreat, go numb, defocus my eyes, and vanish while the yelling I have gone out of my way to make sure my home life contains buffets me for hours into the night.