Just maybe a sense of justice shouldn’t reign supreme, and karmic fates shouldn’t be looked upon fondly. The numerous times where I have seen people harmed in a sense of justice has outweighed justice itself. Then a thought occurred: I have never seen barbarism without zealotry. Then one has to consider that zealotry and wickedness are siblings.

Well what is the alternative lawlessness or the Serengeti, these are preferable but the true answer is to grow up. I grew up on a farm and I was forced to play with a young girl who was one year older than me. If you thought that any part of this was voluntary you would be wrong. The young girl’s parents consisted of a geriatric man and his arm candy. Our family had dealings with horse training and these people, like most in that sphere, were conservative. 

Nothing quite added up in my preadolescent mind, I vividly remembered trying to conclude that her being an asshole was because it ran in the blood. The rocks flung at me as much as her flinging pejoratives. I thought this had to do with her father being an attorney, yet when years went on I noticed something.

We became a little older, I was at my family dinner table and a few family friends were there, she and her family were there. She came out hat in hand with her father behind her and she reluctantly asked me out. I thought for a moment and realized it would be the funniest thing to reject this cruel person in front of her father. As I prepared to be hit, I heard a sobbing then I opened my eyes and saw tears. Something wasn’t right deep down in the pit of my stomach and I looked at the father who was livid. This sat uneasy within me and as I was just a young teenager it took me quite a while of deliberation to figure out what was happening.

By the time I figured it out her first serious relationship was occurring, and sometimes I would see her around at school. When her boyfriend would lean in for a kiss I would look, she would pull away and was uncomfortable. Soft power is like sand it gets everywhere, your socks and in your ears and even your eyes. At home she was rewarded for behaving with a new car and her parents being proud of her. At school she was quite popular and there was a considerable pressure to fall in line, this is the insidiousness of being complacent. She did as she was told and received the benefits of her doing what society and her parents deemed what was right.

Her boyfriend would have been her soulmate if she was straight, they were the best of friends and had the same taste in everything. They had the same taste in women, they were both obnoxious and manly and the outdoors type. So the pressure was really alleviated and where it wasn’t she would bring a tumbler cup of vodka and juice to sip on it like she was a baby. 

These things worked well, she had force asserted on her by her father and she displaced her emotions, but then something funny happened. One week before her eighteenth birthday her father passed, he was in his late seventies. The canned up pressure had a way out and she whiplashed. Before I knew it she bought hiking boots and one side of her head was shaved. Then something really bizarre happened. She became a really nice person, for my whole life this person was insufferable. She was in such a rush she didn’t tell her long term boyfriend that she found a nice girl on the other side of town.

When someone puts pressure on another person, they might get their way for a day or even a few years. However they are loading up a pressure that has to go somewhere. I would refrain from ever doing this to a person I love. If you are met with hesitancy or doubt the correct thing to do is to create breathing room. The idea of leading people into an ultimatum without a way out for them is utter cruelty.

There is a real argument and one that I would adhere to that this person was acting under self preservation. She was a minor and she was reliant on her parents. The idea that her actions under such duress were representative of who she was is the furthest from the truth.