I don�t understand people. How certain emotions can make them do crazy things, psycho things. How two people can get into a relationship, be happy, symbiotic, but as soon as it sours, could turn on each other, wishing harm to a person they�ve claimed to love. I do NOT understand! The police are in my office this morning. This is not the first time, I�m sure if you skipped around my older entries, you�d find a few other occasions in which we�ve required their presence. Comes with the business, working with people, all kinds of people. But they�re not here today because of an incident with an irate temporary employee. They�re here because my boss called them, for personal reasons.

I feel almost traitorous, writing so objectively about the woman in the next office, the woman who ran into the office 20 minutes ago, crying, ran straight to the phone to dial the police. And report her ex. For destroying the inside of her new car because she didn�t respond kindly to the roses he sent yesterday. Because she doesn�t want to get back into a relationship with an abusive, drug addict who uses their toddler daughter as leverage. And as of yesterday, I was supposed to find this guy a job. Apparently, she turned him down last night, after weeks of pleasant and cordial conversation. When she got to the car this morning (an SUV not 6 months old), with her 2 children � whom she drops off at school every morning � she discovered the interior to be trashed. Cigarette burns all over the upholstery, the seats, things missing, things torn, just a mess.

She didn�t want to react in front of the children. She dropped them off at school as if nothing was out of the ordinary, and then came into the office, shaking, crying, broken, to call the police. I can�t imagine the fear that exists when dealing with an obvious psychopath. Who knows what this person could do? Would do? WILL do? I don�t want to think about it. I sat in my office and listened through the thin wall, listened as she wailed and cried and sobbed through the whole thing, updating my coworkers, explaining her state. I didn�t go in there. I couldn�t. The two of them were enough, no? I can handle emotional people, I can handle situations, calm people down, console, comfort. But I chose not to. I sat here, frozen. Dumbfounded, staring at the wall, thinking of all the things I need to get done at work today and what an odd atmosphere it will be, emotion in the air, this crazy man in the back of everyone�s mind, at the forefront of HER mind.

I can hear the deep drone of the officer�s voice in contrast to her higher, almost shrill inflections. He�s speaking very steady, slow, calm, low. Keeping her with him, that�s good. She is one of those women with a long string of bad men, losers, users, abusers, trailing behind her. I have difficulty understanding women like that. I have difficulty feeling sympathy at the level I know I can feel it. Difficulty viewing them as faultless, blameless, there are children involved. Maybe no one is to blame. Maybe this is how the rejected, the hurt, the temporarily and emotionally insane just react. Maybe we all have that trigger somewhere inside us, the one that says, �I�m hurt, destroy the cause of my pain, make it hurt as much as I do.� But then again, maybe not. I�ve NEVER felt that way. Oh, I�ve been hurt, don�t get me wrong, I�ve been rejected, I�ve been upset to the point of extreme depression. But becoming violent? Wishing that kind of pain on ANYONE else, even the person who supposedly �caused� it? No. That�s irrational, it�s inhuman.

And I�m not talking about violence and violence, because as I may have mentioned, I am all for capital punishment. I�m talking about emotion and violence � emotion TO violence. That is what I don�t understand. Putting yourself and your children into situations that are potentially very dangerous. THAT I don�t understand. He still has keys to the house, locks were not changed after he was kicked out the first time years ago. Maybe I�ll never understand. There is no advice I can give her in this situation, nothing I can say. You have to understand before you could ever decide the right thing to do. And I can�t make this point clearly enough: I just don�t understand.

-Barbarella

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