I think I’ve really went apeshit only about three or four times in my life. It never ends well for me when it happens; I always assumed it was because I lacked courage, but it’s really because anger takes away my greatest asset: my brain.
Still, I need advice.
I don’t know if avoiding confrontation is always a healthy thing. This is the first time I’ve admitted this in public, but I hit myself. Quite a lot. When someone wants to fight to me, there’s a part of me that wants to fight back and that anger needs to be released. I can calculate that fighting back only results in both parties losing, and by avoiding fights, I’m actually saving us both from embarrassment. People who pick fights are shortsighted. Why would someone be so arrogant as to pick a fight with a stranger, when they’re not sure how crazy that other person is? One time, this guy kept trying to fight me because he thought I was someone else. When I tried to show him my license as proof I’m not “Andy”, he knocked my wallet away from my hands and asked if I want to fight. Another time, some random person beside me on a red light kept talking trash to me and I finally said come over and say it to my face. They actually got out of their car and when they approached me, I quickly threw my slushie at them and drove off. I was proud of that, but they started chasing me, which scared the shit out of me.
Part of me believes that idiots like this will eventually get their ass kicked by someone else. Part of me also knows that I’m a magnet for dickheads. Life is like rock, paper, scissors. I hold my own against intellectual and reasonable people; it’s the idiots that are my kryptonite. It’s very hard to outsmart an idiot. I remember watching the 2016 election debates and there was an eerily familiar feeling to it. Trump won the debates simply because he kept responding to Hillary like a fifth-grader and she finally got dragged to the gutter not knowing what to do. She was all prepared, trying to win a fight with logic and that doesn’t work against morons. Then I thought deeper into that and wonder, why did Trump win? Why do idiots win so much? In an intellectual society that should never happen, but we don’t live in one.
Idiots win because morons think they’ve won.
If some meathead in public was harassing my family and challenging me to a street fight, I shouldn’t be called a pussy because I ignored him. I shouldn’t be called a pussy because I told the manager or a cop that some guy is harassing me, but it’s always “why don’t you just fight him back, Louis? Why are you such a wimp? Be a man! You’re such a loser!” Maybe what I’m really frustrated about is that I depend on reason and logic, but I also have the sensitivity to let it get to me. I do the smart thing by walking away, but it lingers in my mind until I punch myself behind closed doors. I mean, if I’m sitting alone in a coffee shop minding my own business, why should the obnoxious toxic jackass who kept harassing me stay?
I know I can be courageous because, when it comes to defending people, I tend to find the bravery. I have gotten into fist fights (and really got my ass kicked) preventing bullies from beating up smaller people. I don’t so much as fight as make myself a human pinata while the victim flees to safety. What’s disturbing sometimes is that there’s always a tougher, bigger person in the crowd that could’ve just stopped everything without even raising a fist, but that person never does shit. When I defend others, I’m not afraid of confrontation. When it comes to my pride though, I let myself get shit on. I think this is unhealthy.
Most people don’t handle confrontation as passively as I do. I remember I was with a friend in a movie theater and the assholes behind us kept kicking our chairs. My friend (who has the body of teenage Groot) stood up and said “do that again and I’m gonna fuck you up!” in his nasal voice. Surprisingly, the assholes apologized and left us alone. That didn’t make sense. Logically, they should’ve responded with, “oh yeah? What are you gonna do?” and I seriously don’t know what my friend would’ve done had they said that. He’s the kind of fool who has a brown belt in a mall martial arts store and thinks he’s tough breaking boards. But blind naïve confidence works. Maybe the secret to facing confrontation is to stop thinking so much. Then again, I’ve survived this long by thinking so much.
Partly I’m afraid to fight because I’m lazy. Fights mean someone constantly wanting revenge. Fights mean hospital bills. Fights means litigation. Why can’t the people who start fights see this? I hate how these assholes ruin my day; I wish I could just brush off my walking away. Most times, I just want to grow seven feet tall and beat the living piss out of them. I really want to yell, “what did they think was going to happen?!” I wish people would do what I do when I witness these things and get into the bully’s faces. Nobody defends me when this happens. Maybe the reality is, I’m not the wimp, society is a wimp for rarely stepping up and rarely discouraging asshole behavior. How can they call someone a pussy for walking away to prevent a catastrophe? How can they just film what happens and not actually stop the trouble from happening? I’m surprised I haven’t lost my mind yet. Rude people exist because they can.
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