When I was a kid, maybe 11 or 12, I had a friend in the neighborhood. His name was Doug, he was a couple years younger than me. We weren't best friends or anything, he was a neighborhood kid, and we knew each other, played together, etc.
One day, out of nowhere, he comes around on his bike and just starts being incredibly mean to me. Calling me names, taunting me, just really nasty.
After a few minutes of this, he gets off his bike and picks up this really old Sunday newspaper that had been sitting in a neighbor's yard for a long time. It'd been wet many times, dried back up after, till it was a hard, crumbly mess.
He started hitting me with it as he rode past me. If I got out of the way, he'd throw it at me, then pick it up as I was recovering. It hurt, badly.
During all this, I tried to make him stop. I started by reasoning with him, asking him what was wrong, trying to find out why he was acting this way. Then rage took over, but I was fat and he was fast and on a bike, so I couldn't catch him to make him stop.
In the end, I just collapsed on my knees in my neighbor's yard, sobbing uncontrollably. Between the physical pain and the complete, unbridled frustration, I just collapsed inside and out.
I don't even remember what happened from there. How it ended.
Right now, I feel exactly the same way. No matter how much I try to do the right thing, or make things better, or help situations and people, I just keep taking the hits. I'm completely incapable of making it stop. And that's all I want at this point: I just want it to stop. I'm beyond reasoning with it, I'm no longer trying to salvage the relationship (pushing the metaphor to it's limits, but you get the picture) I just want to be left alone in my impotent, helpless misery.
Feeling sorry for myself? Yep. Someone should, may as well be me.
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