Kicked in the Gut
All that you can do is wish them well
Rush - "Wish Them Well" - Clockwork Angels - 2012
Because I was severely and permanently injured as a child, I had to develop what seems to be a sort of enhanced mental control to survive all the time and prosper some of it. I suspect that's been a factor in the surprising ease with which I was able to quit cigarettes after about 30 insane years and the success of the purging of anger from my life, now in year nine.
Anger Replacement Theory
Anger has to be replaced by something, though, lest I be a lobotomite, ya know?
Those somethings are sadness, empathy, and a kicked in the gut feeling not quite like anything I'd known before. That makes sense - anger is just violent sadness, empathy can result when negative focus is shifted from inward to outward, and that gut thing is, I guess, the rest.
It's distinctly powerful and unpleasant, closely related to a lesser feeling that comes in waves inherent as part of Flozberk life, but still, starkly different.
The only time I feel it so vividly involves The Flozberks. Even upon recently receiving a jarringly unpleasant surprise medical diagnosis, I did not feel it. Just Flozzie stuff sets it off. Some examples:
BiggERest LosERer Kick
When Ryan derailed in singularly jaw-dropping fashion in 2019, my staff was delighted and was pushing the GO button hard - it's usually best to hit opponents when they're down, and hit HARD. I'm not often not cool with that, especially when it involves people I cared about for many, many years.
For several reasons I backed away from the button, but one thing was for damn sure - seeing Ryan in that state, all inky and deranged, made me feel like I'd been kicked in the gut.
Corn Log Kick
Upon being presented with evidence that Tiffany was talkin' snitch AND trying to spread suspicion that I'd murdered Dad, all talkin' autopsy report and such, that was a kick in the gut. I was, yet again, surprised to realize I wasn't angry, just gut-kicked...for me, for her, for all of us. Her irrational hatred was not conducive to a good life. Oh, how far we had fallen!
The more I studied her communications, which quite clearly were lost in an alternate reality fueled by decades of Floz dysfunction and toxicity that she herself had often loudly decried, the harder the kick to the gut felt.
Poor lass.
The Golden Psycho Kick? Seriously? Fer Real, Like?
The worst hoof to the gut through all this Flozberk nightmare took me totally by surprise, though, coming when...get this - I learned that John didn't know Dad had been dead for nine months.
Yes, John is an apex douche canoe who makes my flesh crawl like a lizard. Yet, I was deeply moved by considering how he must have felt and what Dad would think of that. Nine months! That's simply awful, no matter the reasons.
It's strange finding out one you were close to is long dead - I've experienced it a few times of late and expect plenty more. Dad changed John's life and they were very close for many years. That can and did change, but can't be erased. That nine months things was just so...wrong. Such an awful ending. So wrong. That one felt like a horse delivered the blow, and I'm as surprised to write it now as I was to feel it then.
No matter what, I was once fairly fond of that jackoff and people I loved dearly once loved him dearly. I guess that just matters. Compared to the intense, literally murderous hatred I had for him in, say, 2015, that horse kick gut thing was indeed quite a shock.
It would appear I've evolved. Yowza!
Despite the rather unfriendly treatment I've given these fucking assholes on this site, I truly hope all of them do well and can find a way to crawl into cleaner, more rational and honorable lives before it's truly too late. That's what Dad would want and I heartily concur.
That doesn't mean I won't fight like a wolverine for what's fair and set the record straight, though.