The Point Is

I hate confrontation. I will go to great lengths not to be put in that mode, but sometimes there appears to be no choice.

Unfortunately, it is most likely to occur with people I know, or am related to, or friends with. Otherwise the situation would never come to the forefront.

I go to someone's house with someone else and am bombast-ed by flagrant abuse. I had heard stories before, but never truly understood the extent of this situation. It is traumatic enough that I actually find my hands flying up to hide my face at the humiliation and cruelty inflicted on another human being, but the person doing the inflicting apologizes for the victim's behavior. Obviously there is something wrong here.

My first inclination is such irate anger that I want to report this person immediately, but since there is no immediate danger and it has evidently been going on for a long time now, I take a few hours to think about it. I look the subject up on the internet and read it carefully. Deciding that perhaps the first and best solution is to rationally, and trying to be as nonthreatening as possible, confront the abuser and present them with my view of the situation. So I sent them an email tonight, with a link to the information I just read.

Now my heart is beating a hundred miles an hour and I can barely get my breath. I am simply panicking. I know I need to get myself under control for my own sake. I don't know what this person will do. Maybe it will solve the problem, maybe it won't and then where do I go? Maybe this person will come at me with all the bottled up anger and frustration I saw aimed at someone else today. I need to be careful, rational and keep my head.

The point is, I simply could not live with myself if I did nothing.