I feel the familiar anger rise and try to do my 'steps' to calm down. They help with the small things but this not so much. I can feel the anger rising, the what ifs of fate saying what if it was reversed? How the hell can he still let me just walk all over him and whine and still get aways with it all? Finally I can't take his calm any more and I might have spoke a bit louder then I should have.
"How? How are you so calm, well adjusted, at ease with everything?" He doesn't respond right away but I see a tell.
A tense of the jaw mid chew, a hard swallow. Then there is the long drink of his soda. A wipe of the mouth, a careful placement of his food on the table. A hand through the hair, the same hand going to his knee and giving a flex of his fingers down it. Funny I really wouldn't have noticed before, the actions in real time were quick and smooth. They looked like normal mannerisms, but in the tense slowed down moments stretching out I have time to catch every one of them. His fingers tightening to a fist had me scared for a moment.
"I'm calm because what other choice is there as a human?" his elbows go to his knees and his hands clasp. He is facing forward to the room but his head turns to me. "To hurt another person just because you are hurting doesn't make you stronger or better, it makes you weak, it makes you a coward."
The words sting but they are true.
"Also what good would it be to hurt you when you have hurt yourself so bad for so long. I don't kick a man when he is down and I though you hated me forever, I can't remember a time when I didn't just want to love you."
