there's a video on instagram of a man kicking his partner's door in. the top comment is (with over 4 thousand likes): "how about you tell us what you did to make him that angry?"
barring emergency, nobody should be kicking anybody's door in. many of us lived in houses where it was always, somehow, an emergency. there is a strange, almost hysterical calm that comes over you in that moment - everything feels muted, and you almost feel, however incongruently, like you should be laughing. you are living inside of "the emergency." oh my god, you think. i am now a fucking statistic.
there is another comment with 2.8 thousand likes: "if this was a woman doing it to a man, nobody would give a shit."
do people give a shit now, though?
barring emergency, the door should remain standing. the emergency should be panicked, desperate - "i'm coming in there to protect you." many of us know what it feels like when the emergency is instead "i'm coming in there to get you."
1.5k likes: "and yet you post this for notes. glad to see being the victim has become your whole personality."
hysteria is a word connected to womb, from greek. what you're experiencing is so senseless and inhumane that you (a rational creature) try to find any ground within what is irrational and cannot be explained. one of the most frustrating things about staying in bad situations is that we also lie to ourselves. we also ask ourselves - wow. what did i do?
women can be, and often are, also abusers. abuse is not gendered. abuse is not just a "straight person" problem. abuse does not have a face or figure or sexuality. you cannot pick an abuser out of a crowd. an abuser could be actually anybody.
and then so many people rally behind the man kicking the door in. here is something nobody should be doing, right? you want to ask every person that liked that first comment: do you ask this because you side with him? do you ask this because it helps you feel safe from this ever happening?
in some ways, you're weirdly sympathetic to the top comment, because it is the same logic you see frequently. the idea is that the average, normal, sane person doesn't just break down a door. doesn't just shoot up a school. doesn't stalk and kill women. doesn't threaten sexual assault. doesn't run over protesters. doesn't shoot an unarmed black person. doesn't scream at underpaid walmart employees. doesn't just "lose it". something had to have happened, right? because the default (white. straight. cis.) - that is someone who is always, you know. "sane."
(right?)
on a podcast, you hear a sane, normal, rational person. "if you piss me off, i'm going to need to hit something. sorry but i'm not apologizing. that's just who i am that's how it is." his voice almost sounds like he's laughing.
you think of the door, and how you were almost laughing behind it, too. ironically, every real emergency in your life has almost felt peaceful in comparison. fire, car accident, flash flooding - these felt quiet, covenant to you. you'd stood in all of them, feeling them pass over and up to your chin, never actually overwhelming.
but when the door was coming down, you had felt - is there a word for that? there has to be, a word, right.
surely one of us has figured out the word for that, i mean. it's such a large fucking statistic.
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March can be easily flustered...
...If he was aware that the things that he did or were done to him were to be taken as gestures of affection, whether it be platonic or romantic.
There was a method to his madness. Simplicity in logic was to be preferred over convoluted solutions and discussions. The most direct course of action to reach perfection, even when that particular avenue could be misconstrued into something else.
But he couldn't always see it.
When you pointed out that he was being sweet when he gave you that hoe (after fully insulting you, please do not forget) knowing full well how much pride he has on his work, how much blood and sweat he spent on meticulously crafting it to the best it could be, he was a blubbering mess.
He was sober that time so he had the mind to throw you out of the shop with a rather hasty slam to the door, leaving you cackling loud enough for him to hear from inside the blacksmith (loud enough, mind you, to wake up Olric from wherever the hell he was taking a nap).
That one moment you told him that you found it sweet that he took the time to teach you on how to use his forge (with the thickly veiled threat that he will break your arms if you so much as damage his equipment. Don't worry, you threatened to shove his sorry ass into the fire if he ever tried. Both of you had to pull Olric away from the forge because he would have actually fallen into it after laughing so much at the both of you), you were sure he was gonna have a stroke.
When you heard him mention at the Saturday market that he liked hot chocolate, he banged his shin into the stall accidentally when he saw that you bought him a cup (he did accuse you of bribing Darcy to poison it, though. Little shit had the gall to slap your hand away like a greedy little gremlin when you tried to take it back. Both of you were bickering so much that the poor cup of hot chocolate had to be saved by Olric lest it get spilled).
Little instances led you to believe that the man was just a blubbering mess of nerves and embarrassment whenever he ever gets associated with being sweet.
But then there was that time when he took your hand into his, examined every digit, ever crevice, every scratch, every contusion with such intimate concentration that you thought your heart would fail from beating so fast (you didn't even hear him lecture you about being a dumbass in the mines again while he bandaged you, so congratulations on that little victory).
There was that time where you injured your hand (again) and was unable to properly eat your meal. Josephine offered to help you but the gremlin of a man already took it upon himself to feed you himself, all the while continuing the lecture that he started two days before (don't worry, you were much too focused on his very close proximity to you and not choking on the food that you didn't have the mental capacity to process whatever the fuck he was saying).
And then there was that time, one horrible autumn morning, that that fake redhead came barreling towards you, come to a full stop, and rather abruptly press his forehead into yours. You felt yourself short circuit for a moment, hyper aware of the fact that he smelled like nice cinnamon chocolate, both his warm, calloused hands gently pressed at your shoulders to keep you steady, that you didn't even realize that he was berating you for sporting a fever after overworking yourself for the nth time this season (not even when he hauled your ass up his shoulders and dumped you at the clinic himself. Valen wasn't sure if she was impressed or horrified).
None of these changes the fact that he was a wuss at being given compliments. But maybe, just maybe, he was also too dense at being able to pick up on the way his method of care ripped your heart into a torrent of emotion, turning you into the blushing, heart clutching disaster that you often thought of him as. And yeah, maybe you were a little lovestruck. Him too, possibly. Probably. Who the fuck knows. Neither of you surely don't.
(And between you and me, you wouldn't have it any other way.)
(You still hope the son of a bitch kisses you sometime soon, though.)
-0-
check out my masterlist lmao
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