I have counseled many people in abusive relationships. Pre, post and in-between.
In all this time, I have discovered or learned only one thing. Stay the fuck away.
It's none of my business. I just watched too much Oprah. My desire to help stems from my own dementia to paint myself as a superhero. I wanted to be the guy who got applauded on Oprah for doing the right thing.
It's a sick little fantasy. And that comes from the fact that my work hardly ever gets recognition. I'm a writer. The applause for a writer is always in the form of neurological connections, synapses snapping in people's brains.
They have no idea how hard it is to set things up, just so, in order for them to experience a myriad of different emotions, thoughts, feelings. A writer is a composer. Who plays his own piano. Hit the right keys, the right notes, and what happens may be a symphony of chemical reactions in the brain which may be pleasant, or maybe not.
You never see our performance. We are The Invisibles.
Anyway, I'm proud of myself. Recently, a lot of people were going through relationship drama. You know what I did? Absolutely nothing. I think I kicked the habit.
I busied myself with a mountain of work. I sat and meditated. Meditation is now a key component in my daily practice. Call me pretentious, it works for me.
Talking about pretentious, I had a chat about another of my habits just now.
I had an old addiction to revealing to people how little they know of their religion. It was like, "IN YO FACE!" bullshit.
And some of them are just general truths everyone knows, but refuses to acknowledge.
For example, if you fuck, you're going to hell. You drink? You're going to hell. Get high? Hell. Cheat? Hell. Lie? Hell. You don't perform certain rituals? You're going to hell.
Almost everything you do ends you in hell. In most major religions. In fact, in a lot of religions, you may not be doing anything, and you still go to hell.
And I hate atheists. Atheists make me angry. Smug, arrogant ignorant buffoons. They constantly shove their own bullshit down everyone's throats. And they always look down on everyone. That's MY job, fool!
I successfully gave that habit up, with help from some Thai hookers. I love 'em Thai hookers. Wonderfully spiritual people, that bunch.
So here I am, tendering my resignation on that other habit. Getting involved. It is not my right and not my place, and not at all my desire to be caught up with stupid bullshit drama. I can tell you how things will develop in a few years. My instincts have never been wrong in this aspect. But my goddamned instincts always drive me the wrong way when it comes to messing with other people's shit.
I do not want to do that. I'm through. The only games I want to play are:
1. Jagged Alliance 2
2. Super Robot Wars Alpha and Alpha Gaiden
3. Yu-Gi-Oh! Power of Chaos
Other than that, you're on your own.
