28
" {Calpurnia)" My mother…she’s desperate for a daughter she can dress like a porcelain doll. Sadly, I shall never be such a child. How I long for my sister to come out and distract the countess from my person." He joined her on the bench, asking, " How old is your sister?" " Eight," she said, mournfully." Ah. Not ideal." " An understatement." She looked up at the star-filled sky. " No, I shall be long on the shelf by the time she makes her debut." " What makes you so certain you’re shelf-bound?" She cast him a sidelong glance. " While I appreciate your chivalry, my lord, your feigned ignorance insults us both." When he failed to reply, she stared down at her hands, and replied, " My choices are rather limited." " How so?" " I seem able to have my pick of the impoverished, the aged, and the deadly dull. "
33
" The abuser’s mood changes are especially perplexing. He can be a different person from day to day, or even from hour to hour. At times he is aggressive and intimidating, his tone harsh, insults spewing from his mouth, ridicule dripping from him like oil from a drum. When he’s in this mode, nothing she says seems to have any impact on him, except to make him even angrier. Her side of the argument counts for nothing in his eyes, and everything is her fault. He twists her words around so that she always ends up on the defensive. As so many partners of my clients have said to me, “I just can’t seem to do anything right.”
At other moments, he sounds wounded and lost, hungering for love and for someone to take care of him. When this side of him emerges, he appears open and ready to heal. He seems to let down his guard, his hard exterior softens, and he may take on the quality of a hurt child, difficult and frustrating but lovable. Looking at him in this deflated state, his partner has trouble imagining that the abuser inside of him will ever be back. The beast that takes him over at other times looks completely unrelated to the tender person she now sees. Sooner or later, though, the shadow comes back over him, as if it had a life of its own. Weeks of peace may go by, but eventually she finds herself under assault once again. Then her head spins with the arduous effort of untangling the many threads of his character, until she begins to wonder whether she is the one whose head isn’t quite right. "
― Lundy Bancroft , Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
36
" The times might be unpleasant, repulsive. The ghastly chaos, the abhorrent uncivility might be intolerable, might force us into argument or leave us panic-stricken.On such occasions people build within themselves a conviction, that the world outside is diabolical. The whimsical insults test our level of endurance causing us to plead for mercy, wanting us to be pitied than exploited and victimized. Often this grief and shame form a delusion within us that there no longer exists good in this world, that good people are fictitious and that goodness has lost its definition altogether. But such is not true because there are still people who are virtuous, unselfish, willing to help and possessing the ability of restoring our faith in humanity, to disregard them, their presence would be as heinous as the deeds of the people who are unlike them. The times might be unpleasant, repulsive but we’ll come out it, unharmed and liberated. "
39
" We must be passionate and controlled but not reckless. Truth is not established by shame, guilt, or coercion or tribalism. It must be established by reason, evidence, presentation, compassion, and yes, faith. It cannot be established by ridicule, mocking, or insults of sacred icons or traditions but by disproving them or establishing their lack or veracity or usefulness. "
― Leviak B. Kelly , The Leprechaun Delusion
40
" [The long ride to Riyadh]When I first travelled, I was naive, sloppy, wide-eyed, and nothing happened to me. That’s probably where the dumb luck came in. Then I began to read the guidebooks, the State Department warnings, the endless elucidation of national norms, cultural cues and insults and regional dangers, and I became wary, careful, savvy. I kept my money taped inside my shoe, or strapped to my stomach. I took any kind of precaution, believing that the people of this area did this, and the people of that province did that. But then, finally, I realised no one of any region did anything I have ever expected them to do, much less anything the guidebooks said they would. Instead, they behaved as everyone behaves, which is to say they behave as individuals of damnably infinite possibility. Anyone could do anything, in theory, but most of the time everyone everywhere acts with plain bedrock decency, helping where help is needed, guiding where guidance is necessary. It’s almost weird. "