Fight Club.

Fighting sucks.  Not street fighting, or any kind of physical fighting, but word fighting.  Yelling and cussing and being indignant.  It's awful.  The kind of fighting the hits you where it hurts and doesn't stop, the kind of fighting that leaves you with wounds deeper than bruises.  Words that can't be unsaid.  Not the kind of fighting where you're annoyed and you get mad and you're trying to sort something out, the kind of fighting that hits below the belt.  The kind of fights you can only have with someone who knows how to get under your skin and push all the right buttons to disarm and leave you speechless.  The kind of fighting that makes people seem ugly, the kind of fighting that you lose friends over.

I've lost friends through it, it sucks.  Even more so when they go and pretend that they're the victim afterwords.  I've never started a fight like that, but I've finished them.  That's almost the worst part, knowing that even though that person had days, weeks, or months to come up with all of the right words to take you down -that you have the ability to stop them in their tracks and win on the fly.  That was always the worst part for me.  Not being attacked by someone, but winning.  Because the loser walks away with massive emotional wounds, and half the time these fights happen with your friends.  Friends that need you both to step down and help each other instead of hurt.  Friends that usually get hung up on petty jealous things, like clothes or cars or money or relationships.  Things that are different for each of us and rarely are all of the gritty details exposed.  They think your life is easy because you don't complain, and they strike.

It's a terrible thing to start a fight, it's worse to finish it, and everybody walks away limping like a kicked dog.  Nobody wins.  Never underestimate the amount of pain someone is in, because everyone's hurting -some people are just better at hiding it than others.

Love,
Alice