Don't Fight Evil--Walk Away Without The Fight

[Sheila]

Been awhile since I've posted a true story. It's an true confession about the closest I ever came to killing someone--my brother. It so terrified me that from that day, I started trying to control my temper and not become an abuser like most members of my family. These days I'm moving ever closer to pacifism.

We were 13 and 14 yrs old at the time. I'm the oldest. We had been raised by an abusive alcoholic father. Fighting is all we ever saw and all we ever knew about settling differences.

We got into a fist fight and my brother got me into a choke hold. I thought that I was dying and was about to pass out. A voice inside my head said,"Pretend to faint, just go limp." This is what I immediately did. It caused my brother to let me go. But instead of quitting the fight, I jumped up, grabbed him by his hair and we went through a plate glass window.
In my mind, I WAS trying to take off his head. The horror and fear by my reaction haunted me for a long, long time because what I did in that instant--I meant.

This same brother at another time during a fight, pointed a shotgun at me. His finger was on the trigger. He honestly thought that the gun was not loaded. At the last instant he turned towards the door and pulled the trigger. It blew a hole through my mom's door.

It was at this time in my life that I decided that fighting anger with anger was never going to be the answer to anything. My brother and I are friends now, he is still an abuser and is now an alcoholic. The sins of parents ARE visited upon the children and then it takes YEARS to overcome such things if they are ever overcome at all. I have overcome and work ever closer to becoming a pacifist.

This is a quote from Stephen King "Fighting evil with evil is like having sex for chastity."
It sounds a little crude to some, BUT it's the naked truth.

I will ALWAYS walk away from a fight these days if at all possible and have reached a point that anyone can say anything to me or about me and I will either laugh at them or walk.

I'm not sure if any of us can honestly say what's inside us unless we are actually, physically put in that situation. I came close to hating myself over that. I HATED my reaction and the feelings that boiled up in me out of nowhere.