As a kid, whenever I got really angry or upset and had already exhausted the capacity of my more than capable lungs on the subject, I would unfailingly run to my room, slam the door, and throw myself on my bed. Sometimes I’d sob into my pillow for a while, other times I could only force out a tear or two before I got ready to sit there and be angry until they came to apologize. Because they had to come. This was imperative to my plan. I would slam my door and cry, and they would feel sorry and come to try to apologize, but I wouldn’t listen to them. I’d yell over their apologies and tell them that I didn’t want to talk to them until they went away feeling horrible about what they’d done. Then, after the appropriate amount of time had passed (not too little as to make them take this lightly, of course) I would let them come back and apologize for real, and everything would be ok. Or at least, this was how it all went in my mind. Unfortunately for me, though, not everyone in my family was privy to my thoughts on the appropriate procedure for the carrying out of repentance, meaning apologies rarely went the way I wanted them to. More often than not, I’d be left there waiting for far longer than planned, and eventually forced to waste my perfectly executed storming off and slamming of my door by suffering the humiliation of coming out into plain sight before they had even attempted to apologize. Or else they would perform the first part adequately, coming to apologize and being shouted away, but would never come back after, obviously not realizing that they were this close to being pardoned.
Looking back on the whole charade, I often now feel that I must have even somewhat enjoyed, or at least taken comfort in it all, certainly having the power to yell away their apologies if not whatever had made me upset to begin with. Maybe that’s why I did it for so long, I liked being able to make them feel sorry for whatever it was they had done to make me upset. I wanted to feel that power. The power to make them hurt.
While I was busy screaming and slamming my door all of the time, my brothers (Quinn and his twin Eugene) used to vent their emotions by fighting with each other. Huge fights, surpassing the realm of fist-formed solutions, they attacked each other emotionally, mentally, any way that they could to get the other to weaken. They shared a room, which didn’t help. One unfailingly ended up on the inside using his weight and anything else he could find to barricade the door, while the other slammed his body mass repeatedly against the wood shrieking that it was his room too.
My parents didn’t know how to deal with these vicious affairs, and each handled them very differently. Dad’s primary solution was to threaten them, never with physical repercussions, but maybe a form of material loss. (He’d take away money, or something like that.) This tended to work pretty well, at least in getting them to stop fighting at the moment. It didn’t really have any successful long-term effects, but then again it was better than my mom’s methods. Mom was out of her depth. Quite literally, actually, as my brothers were always tall and somehow seemed to grow several inches whenever they were angry. That in itself gave her the disadvantage when compared to my dad who towered over my brothers in their youth, at 6 foot 4. The only way my mom could seem to think of to break up the fight was to run after them screaming, trying desperately to get in between them. But as they were always good at getting around her and generally shouting at such a decibel as to easily mute her remonstrances and render hers a silent pair of viciously moving lips, these methods were largely ineffective.
Within these long drawn-out fights, not unlike some form of staged battle of wits, words, swords, a vicious family feud one way or another, each of my brothers had an assigned role, and being the outstanding actors they are, they never missed a line and rarely wavered from character. While they beat, and pushed, and backed each other around the house, Quinn acted the collected crafter of insults, jumping from one line of attack to the next, apparently unfazed by Eugene’s own efforts to disarm him. Eugene, however, never had Quinn’s self control, and though he hurled a fair number of vicious words himself, he was unfailingly the one to break first, the one whose emotions would flood his voice, distort the sound of his anger, and turn his face red. He was the one to cry, even as he cursed Quinn for being the worst person in the world, even as he yelled that he hated him more than anyone else. And maybe to some it would seem like Quinn had won, like he always won. But then one day he faltered, teetering precariously on the edge of the abyss, before he fell, and I saw that he felt it too.
It had been another huge one, with mercy abandoned and all manner of tactics employed. But there was something different about this time. Because Eugene hadn’t broken down. His eyes were glassy as his face reddened and the spit flecks flew, flung out by his violent words. He was taken up with emotion by these words, but he had not let Quinn’s words in. And maybe he sensed it. That even as Quinn put him down and clawed desperately at his defenses, searching for a weakness, his own wall was crumbling away. There was this look in Quinn’s eye, like a rabid animal, a certain crazed gleam that betrayed him, that showed his own struggle to maintain control. He was losing the struggle, his hair chaotic from being pulled, his lip half curved up at the end, a failed attempt at a sneer, and that animal gleam in his eyes. Not only was he losing, he was going crazy from the effort of preserving even the appearance of control.
And then it went. There was no process; it was there and it was gone. His face crumpled inwards and his eyes liquidated and his being was taken over by despair. He became it; it encompassed him. And there was no room for anything else.
Eugene had won.
I’ve never seen Quinn go that far since, but neither has the despair, the desperation gone away. My mom always used to call him a softy, and I never really understood what she meant. But after that, I started to get it, to pick out the telltale signs: the frequent insults, the rapid degeneration of argumentative reasoning, the forced tone of disinterest. He doesn’t break down, but it’s as clear as if he did. Clear that he wouldn’t be screaming or insulting or standing there shaking his head at you like you’re the stupidest person in the world, if he wasn’t hurt. And he wanted you to be too.
Because we all want to feel that power. We all want them to understand.