War of the Words

I have a love-hate relationship with fighting. A once self-described peacekeeper, I have since tasted the sweet nectar of verbal victory, and it has spoiled me forever in keeping my mouth shut.

We've all experienced that glorious, thrilling, intoxicating moment of being "right". But for some of us, it has an addictive quality. Heated debate can become a form of seduction, leading up to the climax of conversational checkmate. When ideas come to an impasse, and your opponent walks away...it's hard not to let the moral superiority that slips in go to your head and stay there. But don't you feel alive? Can't you feel the blood slowly draining from your flushed cheeks, still hot with the passion of well-articulated arguments? Is your heart still thumping, has it recovered from that crescendo of information exchange? Don't you just love yourself?

But those are arguments in the abstract sense, over politics or history or current events, things that can be won with a well turned phrase and a liberal dose of fact. Rarely is there any serious fallout from these coffeehouse skirmishes. There is another kind of argument, equally addictive and dangerous in high quantities, and those are the fights you have with people you love, over personal matters. This is the 'hate' part of my relationship with confrontation.

When I was little, I was so terribly sensitive to familial conflict. My sister was something of a firecracker in her younger days, and had, what they called back then, "a mouth on her". And I would imagine the hurt in my parents, as I'd surely felt it myself, and I would be compelled to make it right, to erase the conflict with being good. I was discouraged from following my sister's example, and so I learned the delicate art of appeasement. A necessary skill, but one that, if not balanced with the know-how of assertiveness, can paralyze your sense of self. (How can you know who you are if you don't know how to respond to injustice?)

Beyond the induction into teenagehood and the hormonal obnoxiousness that went hand in hand with it, I only really learned how to fight when I fell in love for the first and only time. My ex, however lovely and well intentioned at heart, had a knack for rubbing people the wrong way with offensive, self-righteous social commentary. I was often included with said group of the offended, and when I learned to identify that burning feeling in my stomach as the need to speak out, he was at the receiving end of it. And because he loved me, he often listened to me. And conceded defeat.

And so, I figured I was good at fighting. I could change peoples' minds. And I think I started to believe that because my intentions were pure, I was pretty much always right. If I could batter down the most oppressively negative, angry man I'd ever met with my optimistic insights, then I could win over anyone, right?

Except there are people in this world whom you will never change. They are called your family. This includes spouses, lovers, best friends, anyone who is in the inner circle. People you don't put your best face on for, because they are privy to all the ugliness and awkwardness you disguise for strangers, as a bestowal of trust. With these people, the only way someone wins is when someone gets hurt and walks away. There is no victory in that, no delicious righteousness, only the heavy heart that now carries the guilt of injury, and that awful moment of quiet that accompanies it.

I just don't know when to fight, and when to walk away. I let things fester and boil up till I become irrational. The rules of combat are suspended, I arm myself with every broken bottle, brass knuckle and pocket knife of cheap words, and I rumble till there's no one left standing. It's the strangest thing, but a fight with family reduces me to my inner thirteen year old. Mature enough to put a voice to grievances, but not sophisticated enough to take the sting out of it.

I realized this morning, as my eyes were filling with tears, and I indulged every last ounce of burning in my gut toward my father, that the only moment in a fight worth having is one filled with mercy, and devoid of pride.

I wish that moment had been mine.