The Justice System

Intro:

https://forum.philosophynow.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=39702

Obsolete link:

https://www.irishpolitics.net/threads/spur-of-the-moment-defence.742/

Copy of thread:

https://medium.com/@michaelmcmahon334/spur-of-the-moment-defence-b1d1b990b064

https://www.centristforum.com/index.php?threads/non-sexual-provocation.652/

The far-left sometimes contradicts themselves by seeking help for poor people but not as much help for victims of crime. The dilemma is that left-wingers who want to rehabilitate criminals without much confinement are hogtied into rehabilitating vigilantes in a soft way too. Hence rehabilitation could spiral downwards without jail-time if the court system simply plays the role of referee between rival criminals. We aren't more or less ethnic than each other to justify local brownie points in court! Worst case scenario an inconsistent court system could be used to excuse not only class warfare but also racism in multi-racial countries. After all the jury is composed of capitalists rather than legal philosophers! Proportional retaliation doesn't mean equal vengeance but simply partial vengeance when proportionality can be just like a steady ratio. One difference between slavery and criminality is that you'd to buy the slave in order to be evil to the slave. Yet criminals can attack anyone at all. As such the idea of casually trusting criminals not to be evil again can be reckless if they don't disown such an entitled mindset. Perhaps the unlimited forgiveness of Christianity is only possible if the victim was really tranquil in their life. Unfortunately many Christians simply aren't capable of being fully Christian when they're balancing other life goals. Christians cannot rely on non-Christians to support their religion. Forgiveness as a virtue would make a lot of sense if Christianity was presumed to be safe with a guaranteed future. Yet Christianity is becoming an endangered religion in the west where forgiving people without being defensive could undermine the religion. There is so much wealth inequality that to demand everyone be forgiving to criminals can be uneven. What the left wing forgets is that even though poor people are more inclined to become criminals it's also poor people who end up being victimised the most by poor criminals. As the largest population segment poor people will statistically be targeted the most by violent people. Poor people are the most vulnerable to burglary due to weaker home defences. A problem with people who support soft treatment of poor criminals is that they're mimicking aristocrats in their entitlement. Rich people in today's world are seen as professional but in the medieval era they were openly evil. Aristocrats didn't care about commercially innovative justifications of their wealth when they merely inherited their wealth. Hence poor people who assume an antisocial mindset might be disproven by violent rich people in past centuries openly willing to duel other rich people out of pure machismo:

"I'm not sorry and I will not apologise."

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6bos2ZTGNZc&pp=ygURQmFycnkgbHluZG9uIGR1ZWw%3D

Barry Lyndon - The Duel - English Captain

The limitation of suspended sentences is that foreign nations can descend into remorseless evil during warfare. As such a perpetrator in court who isn't verbally sorry shouldn't be assumed to be ethical just because they relate to the national culture. That is to say anyone can side with evil beliefs in private.

Precedence is being used as a guideline and not a rule(!):

(Pirates of the Carribbean: Black Pear - Elizabeth - Pirate's Code)

Hatred can be reasonable if a partner is caught cheating and this deceit can justify leaving the person forever but it really doesn't condone physical violence. This might sound unrealistic but we've to keep in mind that there are plenty of happy and elderly bachelors in the world who go through their entire lives without the need for a romantic partner. Unless, if it's like the Jarhead movie where they make a video and send it in for your fellow troops to watch, then perhaps we could interpret it as a tiny mitigating factor! Although I'm not sure how much of a slippery slope there is when there's "provocation" in both the romantic and non-romantic senses of the word!

(Jarhead Deer Hunter Scene)

I only rewatched it to edit out any inappropriate content! Jake Gyllenhaul's reply of "fagg*t" also brings up ethical dilemmas. Is it justifiable to be enraged at the personal dismissiveness of a rebuke even if the general insult ends up being far more offensive to a stigmatised minority? In other words if you're not technically standing up for the gay community in this case then you'd almost have to be consenting to the derogatory tone in society in order to be angry about being called it.

Perversion always sounds cool until you're forced to listen to someone's sexual detours mid-article. With rap music these days you never know what someone could cite as provocation:

(Eminem: Rap Game - all dead)

We'll all be rooting for an ice age after that song to justify unlimited sexual violence to survive the elements!

Judge: Your excuse for stealing the bike is?

Defendant: My penis made me do it. It gives me the strength needed to get through each day.

Judge: Defendant was under duress. Charges dismissed.

Proportionate punishment of criminals isn't about vengefulness. Rather that's just my sexuality!

Ironically some criminals adopt tough-on-crime attitudes to cover up their tracks. I hope this doesn't make me look suspicious! This reminds me of when someone accidentally picked up my tennis bag at the club years ago. He mistakenly thought it was his daughter's bag. I said no worries but then he started warning about the risk of thieves and not to be leaving my bag on the road!

I never said that I'd never be provoked into attacking anyone; merely that I wouldn't expect to be let off the hook if I chose such an option!

He regrets his surname!

Despite the quotation marks the journalist never actually stated who had called it a hose or whether it was simply a description of the journalist's making!

If you have the emotional and physical capacity to kill an abusive spouse then why not just use your strength to leave and divorce them instead:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=apwjgE0n9fc

Crime Reporter: Man Had Sex With Wife Thousands Of Times Before Killing Her - The Onion

I've a fatal flaw: I end up using misogynistic jokes to protect women from other misogynists!

It's strange that I'd to write an entire thread about provocation just to ensure that even if I was evil I still couldn't be tempted into violence for the mere reason I'd be hypocritical to say nothing of being immoral!

I view myself as a masculine academic person; in other words I'm not too masculine! Only those who can apply perverted highs to hardcore academia can be tolerated!

Would a refusal to stop mid-sex count as rape when they were already in the later stages?

I was in the front seat where an elderly cousin was the driver. We were pulling out very slowly from a petrol station when he started admiring a nearby car. I saw a woman walk in front of us but I ignored her because we were driving so slowly. When the driver turned around he got quite the shock! Perhaps I'll have to be more expressive in the front seat!

On 6 November 2022 at 10:15pm I was walking outside Centra on the Gort Road in Ennis. A young man approached quickly me and joked about my beard. I didn't respond because he wasn't overtly threatening. However he tried to touch my beard and I was forced to flick his hand since it was an ambiguous gesture. I walked away and another young male shouted twice "f*ck you". I ordinarily wouldn't respond to such insults but because he was a bit smaller and a few years younger I gave him the middle finger. I did so as I walked away. If I let him get away without criticising him then I'd have been a small bit complacent towards other potential victims of his. In any street shouting incident it might be advisable not to try to out-shout them. If it's that bad then it might be best just to be physically vigilant. The trouble is that we can't compete with bad people when it comes to verbal rage. The trouble with using masculinity as an excuse for provocation is that masculinity isn't just about defensiveness but also apathy. Most people these days simply don't care whether you won a street fight because it's not relevant to their life. I wear a beard not because I want to appear macho but simply as a spiritual gesture of uncertainty and ruggedness! I dress casually as an adult not to appear childish but simply as a little reminder not to appear too serious if I get angry! If you wear a suit and you get angry then you might not be forgiven because you'd resemble a WW1 German soldier! I rang the police afterwards not to file a criminal complaint but simply to report the incident. Then if they find them they can simply warn them in case they were to do the same to others. Some people are immoral simply for forcing you to be more extreme in your own ethical system. Technically the two youths did good in a way that's extortionate on me. Perhaps they made me realise how much more ferocious I'd need to be to other ambivalent people in my gun control thread in what was a complete accident on the part of the youths. Maybe they threatened me not to incite me to be evil to them but to make me more patient to other rebels willing to be just as anti-social as them. In other words they might not have wanted me to overreact in an evil way to other evil people. For example I wasn't actually lowered in social rank by their condescension simply because the society is good. Hence they simply wanted to threaten me enough to make me feel humble but not to feel violent towards them. An extreme analogy is of how the Italian mafia might actually want other people to be ethical so that the mafia members don't have to feel too evil.

If you believe that masculinity should be a mitigating factor then you'd be forced to concede that punishment shouldn't bother you simply because you're masculine! Another problem is that masculinity can sometimes be insular such that they don't actually learn from other countries. If you want to be more self-controlled then just travel to a more masculine country on a holiday or eat in a Turkish kebab restaurant!

Masculinity can be intoxicating but that can be deceptive when it's applied to collective policies. You'd find a masculine component to any political or economic ideology simply because if it failed then any recession or death could still be viewed as self-sacrificing. So people charged with manslaughter didn't request a duel and so street fights aren't always honest in "masculine" way. Masculine people could just ambush other masculine people such that there's not much sense to see it as a big mitigating factor. If a court gives a suspended sentence then it could take into account the religion of the victim in terms of demanding extra forgiveness. However you'd be relying a lot on the strength of their faith which could be risky. Perhaps there's no perfect sentence where the effects of jail on a certain prisoner are unpredictable. However there's still idealism in expecting some degree of "rough" consistency if they can't achieve "hardcore" consistency. Worst-case scenario we'd up with a Trojan style war about a missing wife!

Any crime of provocation could actually be a called an indirect sex crime seeing as anyone who's already sexual doesn't need to take the clothes off the victim to know that they're naked underneath. The fact that any heterosexual man can temporarily be a homosexual sadist towards another heterosexual man is the ultimate disproof of anyone favouring absolutist views on masculinity.

Let's imagine there was a countryside estate of 50 homes. It was far from any village and was pretty much built on a random farm. Here the problem is obvious where the community is isolated and burdensome on public facilities. We wouldn't be worried about house design or adding in social housing because there are still too many cons. Luckily housing problems aren't this extreme in real life. Yet when we hear of lots of one-off houses in rural areas or housing estates on the outskirts of town then there's always a risk of a milder variation of the same problem. If the town centre is itself underdeveloped then it's hard to pressure people to form a greater connection to the community. It has to be synchronised or new residents would be forced into a chronically underfunded area. There's already a 1970s old outskirts to towns only to continue on to the modern outer outskirts where they're pretty much their own villages! Maybe an all-or-nothing approch is the best form of motivation. Either deregulate all construction or ensure they're applied consistently!

This is an argument ad absurdum but if the court system was perceived to be softer towards one crime in particular then this creates a risk of collective perversion. The courts are often balanced by judges of opposite extremes such that there's no overall discrimination. However even an inferrence from reading limited amounts of media could warp certain minds. It's often commented how violence is actuall becoming rarer releative to historical generations. Yet the difference is that violence can be concentrated in different areas and so everyone knows about it from journalists. When we think of countries that committed war crimes we often know that a lot of the culprits likely had nice dispositions but didn't object to their government. The trouble is collective morality is unconsciously stronger than an individual's morality. So if individuals are a bit amoral and ignore their evil leaders what might end up happening is that such crimes are endorsed as vicarious hedonism or perversion. Then many more civilians get sucked into joining rogue regimes. As such we never want to think the courts are overly tolerant of socially discriminatory crimes.

I find myself getting into hot water over my Minority Rights even though I'm not actually a member of an ethnic minority. So I think it's important for victims to not only make a case for themselves in court but to also assert themselves in the media if they feel aggrieved. Public opinion is important because you can lose a battle but still win the war! It's hard to know whether to campaign for people if they're already personally forgiving to a partial extent. Any victim is free to form a petition within the rules of democracy. Moreover victims can write their opinion pieces to the local paper. The dilemma is that even if some victims are willing to disagree with a low sentence they often do not complain hard enough to warrant others to protest for them. A summary of my justice thread was sent to two victims' rights groups in early 2023:

On the 24th April 2023 I awoke from a dream in which I was driving a car and pressed the breaks before swerving to try and avoid hitting a pedestrian. However a passerby somehow flipped my car over to stop me hitting the pedestrian. It was only a dream so I didn't take the superhuman strength of the passerby too seriously. Perhaps when it comes to my current thoughts on car accidents in the justice system the dream might indicate that those who try to swerve out of the way too late and hit a person are still redemptive to some extent in trying to minimise the damage. After all the perpetrators of accidents don't have superhuman strength to hyperfocus on a sudden diversion.

https://www.scienceforums.net/topic/122684-are-people-that-do-crime-really-responsible%C2%A0/

(My comments are on post 4, 6 and 8 page 1, post 10 and 13 page 3 and post 8 page 4 of that thread.)

I agree with the goal of rehabilitation on the first page. Although I add that cautious punishment in jail isn’t always vengeful. So non-excessive punishment doesn’t contradict the aim of rehabilitation. Prison may be helpful in preempting and averting there being other future victims from the accused individual. The negative incentive of prison can eventually make someone see the error of their ways. The warning of prison time is necessary for the severe types of crimes so that we can then be more able to fully trust the criminal to not commit another serious offence in the long-term and to hope that they keep to their apology well after they’ve left jail. While it’s indeed true that a criminal can’t undo the past we can still try to learn from any misdeeds we may have made in order to change and prevent similar problems from arising in the future. People seldom change personality overnight and sometimes an epiphany can take a longer time. Discipline in jail entails reward for good behaviour and punishment for bad behaviour.

On page 3, I wade into the death penalty debate. I appreciate the Christian teaching to be always forgiving but in the context of a severe crime I imagine it’s acceptable to simply dislike the person less. I reason that the penalty of death is unnecessary seeing as serial killers can be pretty much buried alive with various restraints in a jail cell. Implementing the death penalty in rich countries might serve as a poor role model for developing countries who'd have less resources in their court systems and forensic departments. I do understand the ethical and slippery slope arguments. Please note that I purposely refer to serial killers who’ve killed multiple people and not murderers with one count. The sheer amount of damage they could do by further demeaning their victims or stirring up unrest if they became unrepentant means that they need to be thoroughly rehabilitated. Handcuffs can prevent the use of police batons during noncompliance or riot.

I just think that as this particular crime is an infrequent logical extreme, the defensive punishment would therefore statistically be rarely used. So I don’t think there’s too much risk of a downward spiral. The ingrained evil of serial killers/mass shooters/war criminals are obviously many orders of magnitude worse than all of the other types of criminals. Thus it will be harder to rehabilitate them. Remorselessness could be used to infer the degree of intentionality during the crime. The sanctity of life is respected as the serial killer would avoid the death penalty. I just feel that trying to rehabilitate these specific individuals back into society is too risky and much of a lost cause.

Forgiveness is crucial and will always be a spiritual and emotional virtue. But indeed the concept of forgiveness, patience and giving second chances isn’t the same as subservience. It’s of course possible that a hypothetical person who committed multiple attacks is already fully repentant. Although in such a scenario it’d always be hard to tell whether they’re sincerely apologetic no matter what they said. You’d never know if it was with genuine sadness or else if they’re a bit equivocal with self-interest or ambivalence given how hostile their previous mindset must have been. Jail is a backup plan in case there’s a risk of remorselessness and recidivism. That’s why irrespective of the deterrence vs rehabilitation or free will vs determinism debates, there’d at least have some jail time for a severe crime if only as a precaution.

(Warning: reading my joke below could send you to hell! See very last section of lucid dreaming thread. My ethics has always been very clear; think about as much misogynistic violence as you want so long as you only use it to defend against men that have actually acted on the trait! I'm not sure if you'd give in to temptation by serial killing women just to kill an actual serial killer. You'd be your own worst enemy! If there was ever a major earthquake where I suddenly had to increase my perseverance and literally kill a woman to save more women, then you'd have to stay well back!)

It's intended as satire to emphasise the brutality of the death penalty but the captivating attractiveness of the news reader makes the dark executions seem so credible!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfsMMVgIToA

Ohio Replaces Lethal Injection With Humane New Head-Ripping-Off Machine - The Onion

Mississippi exonerates a death row inmate by putting him in a fight to the death with another death row inmate(!):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XNE5Bi0ktVQ

Big Fred, Django Unchained Fight Scene

(Try to finish each school essay with a reference to obscene violence in order to intimidate the examiner!)

Post 48 page 2:

https://debatepolitics.com/threads/murder-in-canada.362840/page-2#post-1070364904

Unfortunately there could be serial attackers who might not even try to repent after being caught. In the case of the Norway mass shooting Breivik was not only remorseless but was still attempting to incite others to commit further hate crimes in court. His unapologetic attitude is an implied threat that he’d be willing to attempt to do it again if he was given the chance. I think rehabilitation can incorporate the idea of reverse reasoning when it comes to such uncooperative perpetrators. No it’s not about the active deterrence of others. A proportional judicial response is about being neutral and passive towards any unrelated criminals. It focuses solely on how to deal with the specific perpetrator who committed the crime. But sadly a disproportionately lenient response to the likes of Breivik might inadvertently be seen as a vulnerability or an incentive by other potential attackers who subscribe to these sinister ideologies.

The Christchurch mass shooter was influenced by Breivik's ideology and Breivik's repeated public statements of remorselessness worsens the risk of macabre followers. Some people say not to even mention their name to reduce notoriety. This might be helpful in recognising the unspeakable amount of evil they inflicted but I still think we've to sometimes say who they are for clarity so people know exactly who we're talking about. Perhaps we could get into a habit of naming them once at the beginning of a conversation and thereafter refer to them by the location name followed by the adjective mass shooter so as to avoid repetition. Although naming them is also necessary so the public understand the ideology they were motivated by as well as their personal characteristics so we understand the risk factors of their biographical profile. Moreover always avoiding their name risks creating an impression of an insurmountable threat such the fictional character of Voldemort under the designation of "he who shall not be named".

23 page 1 and # 57 page 3:

https://debatepolitics.com/threads/mass-shooters-should-be-killed-slowly.365095/

Although both are dire crimes there’s an immense distinction between murder and serial murder. Even working within the framework of Norway’s restorative model there’s a mismatch in that Breivik would of got a similar sentence to a criminal who killed just one person. I understand Norway’s stance against the death penalty. Their commitment to objectivity and self-control is commendable. But a very grim way to rephrase his horrific crime is that he permanently confined 77 innocent victims into jail cells the size of a coffin. I think a three-room house arrest will be inadequate to change the mindset of this terrorist. Sometimes the medicine for an illness is painful and has side-effects so the way to cure psychopaths like him is intense confinement in my opinion. Without much display of self-awareness one can only assume he’s the same violent person as he was when the attack was carried out. Restorative justice can include the notion of tough love. The sanctity of human life recognises that evil people can repent or die of natural causes without in any way attributing sanctity to evil people themselves and their sacrilegious actions. Serial killers are not unconscious or non-rational animals even though their crimes might sometimes be dubbed animalistic. Norway might not like the notion of deterrence but they've managed to deter me from supporting such a lenient and complacent response to an atrocious individual. Anyway I still support how well-funded their general prison system is. Some prisoners in other countries unfairly receive extra punishment through poor hygiene, cold or sweltering air temperatures, crowded conditions and even threatening behaviour from fellow inmates. This wasn't part of their judicial sentence which should only refer to a loss of freedom or confinement. Poor nutrition for example seems like a pointless punishment. This means a shorter sentence at a bad prison could be worse in punishment to a longer sentence at a well-resourced jail. Should a prison-rape victim be released from jail due to the horror of the unofficial punishment? So I'm not all negative towards Scandanavian rehabilitation models.

The Atlantic: “Norwegian far-right monster Anders Breivik... received 21 years in prison for his attacks last year, including a bombing in Oslo and a cold-blooded shooting spree, which claimed 77 lives. That's just under 100 days per murder. The decision, reached by the court's five-member panel, was unanimous. He will serve out his years (which can be extended) in a three-room cell with a TV, exercise room, and "Ikea-style furniture."

'Richard Patterson, 65, of Margate, was acquitted of killing 60-year-old girlfriend Francisca Marquinez in 2015 after a week-long trial...

But after a medical expert testified that choking during the sex act was unlikely, the defense reversed course on the theory. The judge never ruled on the request to put Patterson’s member on display in court.

“That’s not the way she died,” defense lawyer Ken Padowitz said. “But that’s the way Richard Patterson thought she died.”'

https://nypost.com/2017/05/23/murder-suspect-who-used-big-penis-defense-found-not-guilty/

A fundamental flaw is that men are aware of their own sizes through proprioception. I don't know what the risks of criminal psychosis would be during conception and so forth. A problem with one-night stands is that dating in a public place helps to vet the partner. Another problem with these cases is that judges and juries aren't always assessed for spiritual and family values. Perhaps sexual crimes should have juries that have a few health staff given a possible risk of bias. A "big penis defense" could be pretty much used in any non-sexual crime too. People might need greater encouragement in self-defence legislation in order to deal with bad people and a risk of spiralling perversion in society. After all if a court system can't handle sex crimes then they likely wouldn't fare much better with general robbery crimes. Rough sex defences might resemble an insanity defence except that the perpetrator likely had bad thoughtlines in previous instances too. A trouble with consensual counter-arguments of BDSM is that certain women might accidentally appear masochistic simply out of past abuse. Porn can contain extreme sex acts but they're always done safely simply because it's their profession and they're policed by a camera and managerial crew. The idea that the victim was strangled by other people afterwards is too coincidental. It implies that lots of men wanted to strangle her to death on that very day. The only small mitigating factor would be if you lost control in a threesome seeing as so few people are accustomed to them! Rough sex defences in manslaughter defences are limited in that it takes about 20 seconds to strangle someone to death. So even if the victim is mentally unfocused the unconscious mind will inflict pain and cannot be killed without a lot of force. Forgiving people for sex crimes can be more difficult than ordinary crimes because the hedonism of sex is relatable. By contrast the high of stealing a car isn't relatable for those who don't have an already evil mindset. The damsel in distress theme in fairy tales can override our empathy for the perpetrator in real life. The flaw in this chivalrous logic is that any act of evil can be more hedonistic than sex even if it's not a knowable sensation for those who don't support evil.

Adults only joke I made anonymously as M:

https://www.freeones.com/forums/threads/extremely-dangerous-symbolism.1029295/

Defeating murderers at their own game! I pre-empted all other bad people willing to create such a macabre genre! I needed to dissuade copycat attacks!

https://debatepolitics.com/threads/w-378-home-intruder-clings-to-life-after-being-shot-in-head-by-young-dad-protecting-his-family.387369/page-4#post-1071425686

(Post number 90, page 4.)

Fairness is a two-way street. We can’t scapegoat or exaggerate the threat posed by a particular person. By the way I’ve never heard anyone more obsessed about the word “homeowner” than America! I hardly ever see it used in crime articles in Ireland or Europe. I heard a joke about one of my deceased relatives who was bursting to use the bathroom but they mixed up the houses when they visited my grandparents. That could have been even more tense if it was in America.

You don’t even need to leave a voice message; just ring yourself with pretend threats and you’ll intimidate anyone that overhears you!

The forum below seemed to have crashed for a while and so I'll repost its content here. I'd gotten one or two short replies to each link with one commentator saying my provocation defence article was an "excellent OP". https://www.politicsisle.com/threads/death-penalty-alternatives.1229/

https://www.politicsisle.com/threads/provocation-defence.1228/

The forum reappeared after a month with my threads gone. Not exactly sure what happened.

Renewed Thread:

https://www.politicsisle.com/index.php?threads/provocation.66/

Deleted thread photos:

I keep spare copies in cases it ever crashes again.

18/3/23:

I always take screenshots of my posts but a pdf is a timesaver instead of searching through the dates in my photo gallery.

Check my medium homepage for the deleted Provocation Defence thread:

8/4/2023

A blog of links is handy to save storage space on the website. Moreover debate forums are a perfect medium to get people's opinions. Once you've a few different threads then that will be a critical mass to keep forming new ideas in an upward spiral! I'm always careful to reference all of my work with quotes; not because I'm being corrected by a teacher but simply that there's a risk my internet links will break over time!

https://politics.ie/threads/fool-on-a-hill-taxpayers-underwriting-failures-in-regulation.284326/page-4#post-13439652

75

PS: I never went to law school. I did junior cert CSPE if that’s any consolation!

I had these walkie-talkies when I was a young child. They often picked up the signal for the builders talking to each other in the back of the estate. One day after dinner I heard them and started cursing into the walkie-talkie. The boss got angry and began threatening the employee with getting him fired as he didn’t know it was me. I tuned out so I’m not sure how they resolved it. I was too young to know any better!

Any defence given in verse format will be viewed as an additional mitigating factor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSLZFdqwh7E

(Eminem - Stan)

I was checking over my blog links so I spent the last half-hour listening to Stan and the Sopranos murder compilation. I didn't realise there was another guest in the room so I've truly no idea what type of person they're expecting me to be. Without a threat of a woman being killed it'd be hard to be serious to others!

Needless to say there'll be a full acquittal on offer for those who confess to their crime in a music video presentation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubvV498pyIM

(No Doubt -It's My Life)

(For some political correctness I felt I should counterbalance a male killer song with a female killer song! Not sure if I'm helping my cause here!)

The insanity defence would require more of a heavy metal vibe to convince the jury:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjVkXlxsO8Q

(Papercut - Linkin Park)

If others misuse my militia theory to wreak havoc on society and I get blamed for bad advice, then I'll say I was just being paranoid against the entire nation and world order when I wrote it!

I don't want to give the wrong impression; I'm not saying I'd never be provoked into committing a crime. It's simply that I wouldn't expect to be let off the hook if I fell down that path!

I was late for class after being at a hurling match. Two people ahead of me were sent out and warned me to say sorry and not just to walk blasé into class. I did so and got a big round of applause from the class. It was a week later when the other two snitched that they'd told me to say sorry and the entire class gasped!

What better way to test your resilience than to deliberately get lost in a foreign city? I was feeling overconfident so I decided to let my phone go out of battery before finding my way back to the hotel. I couldn't ask anyone for directions because I don't speak Portuguese and didn't even bother to remember the name of the hotel. There's no cheating allowed for the sake of your own self-esteem. I was to test my orientation skills and rely on my general sense of direction to navigate to the other side of the city. Unfortunately it took me at least 4 hours to locate it because I didn't recognise the square it was beside from different vantage points. It was embarrassing because I passed by the top of the road at least 3 times and it was after 2am on return. When I checked Google Maps afterwards I could see that I was searching in all the wrong places miles away!

Well, well, well. My memory of the police arrest programmes on TV sunk in. Much of my problem with my parents revolved around fake offers; deceitful offers of apology or pretend gifts. It can seem hypocritical for someone raised by somewhat middle class parents to be so frustrated with them. After all many children in poor families don't complain because their parents couldn't afford gifts even if they wanted to offer them. The reason pretend kindness can be so annoying is because there's a sudden contrast between love and anger such that it almost resembles pure hatred. It can be very confusing when you feel indebted to them for generous gifts even though the emotional value might be ambiguous when they already had spare money. I'd get the best Christmas and birthday presents ever only to realise how little they cared at other times. Sometimes you’ve got to assert your authority around the house(!):

Her exaggerated crying was in anger and incitement that she didn't get to attack me rather than it being out of sadness. I was confused at first by her apparent emotion of fear when it was herself who was on the offensive. I think it was merely an attempt to vilify me as being violent even though I was non-threatening. She sneered continuously with a contorted expression. Staring in fear isn't just a defensive sensation and it can also be used as a threat of vigilance in preparing and psyching yourself up to fight. She was roaring at the very top of her voice. If that's not verbal assault then I don't know what is. She was trying to destabilise me with an extremely high pitch. They were insulting me where my sister was expressing how much she hates me and to get me out while my mother was trying to console them by ridiculing me as "sick" and warned them that I was "angry". The way she responded so drastically to a simple request to leave me alone is a sign her accusations were deceitful:

We’ve to control our emotions against any agitated and melodramatic siblings!

No I don’t need a taxi! After packing my bags a few times and having fallen out with my temperamental parents and many relatives, I’ve inadvertently become an expert on the trustworthiness of apologies! I learned the hard way. We sometimes got on quite well and I gave them a dozen second-chances even though they could be dismissive and unhelpful. But I’d to leave them for good in September 2020 after they started pushing and shouting. It was very prolonged. I'd told them in the kitchen that I didn't want to stay with them any longer because they were ignoring me. OK I admit I started it by telling them to get lost. I regret saying it in an insulting manner. I told them I hated them without expecting them to imply the same! Perhaps this was a double standard! I really raised my voice but not to the extent that I was technically shouting. I learned from my accidental aggression that shouting can be limitation in a provocation theory. When you shout you use all of your upper body muscles and even if the sound isn't threatening to your ear drums it can still be psychologically troubling. From the perspective of free speech an academic person simply doesn't need to shout to express criticism. Shouting can be harmless or even helpful depending on the context. Endless shouting could even be a form of torture. So I don't dispute that shouting can be ambiguous when it comes to justifying a physical defence. But they became hysterically aggressive and they wouldn't let me leave until they voiced their thorough hatred of me. My father leapt off his seat and tried to push me with his chest. I blocked him with my hand and told him to stay downstairs while I packed my bags. After a minute had passed he followed me upstairs. He approached me looking pensive while I was in my bedroom. Then he suddenly grabbed me, tried to shake me and bent forward as he screamed in my ear to never come back. He repeated that same line 3 or 4 times. He was snarling in a really deep and unnaturally fast hoarse voice. It was in a threatening manner right in my face where it was almost like my sense of self wasn't in my head. His unrecognisable tone was in stark contrast to his usual soft voice. A small amount of his expression was ambiguous and unnatural enough to resemble fear instead of anger alone. This subjective interpretation would be unsettling simply because it'd be as if he was in fear of how much angrier he could be if he lost even more self-control. I was passive initially when he shouted and so he shouldn't have been in immediate fear of my defences. I managed to shout back at him to get out and began retreating to the door. He was trying to size me up for a fight and kept his eyes on me as he retreated by walking backwards. My mother and sister were with him and blocked off the entrance. They were ganging up on me and screeching. I found the combination of their starkly different, weird and hedonistic facial expressions to be very confusing and overwhelming. All three of them were inciting each other and bracing themselves. They tried to stare me down really intensely and angrily. My father assumed a wide-eyed expression. After at least 10 seconds they refused to retreat. I felt cornered and managed to close the door on them. It was an outburst of unjustified anger about nothing at all. Their wild and unpredictable behaviour caused me a lot of uncertainty. I remembered my disagreement with the provocation defence and avoided escalation! I immediately realised that I lacked sufficient evidence should the situation have gotten worse. It was only after much of the incident was over that I managed to pull out my phone and record them as a warning. I don't habitually have my phone on the ready and couldn't have recorded the incident as it unfolded. My father walked back to his room in self-pity. I quickly packed and my mother wouldn't stop following me until I'd left the front garden. She had waited by the car while I'd to keep going back upstairs to collect more bags. Eventually I'd to shout at her to back inside before she stopped harassing me about a lift. They knew I'd have to leave them for a long time and that's why they did it. It was them who tried to deter me as much as they could from ever returning. My upper body strength wasn't as strong as my teenage self due to shin splints and hence my physical advantage over them wasn't by a comfortable margin. The fatigue of sleep problems the prior few nights meant my reflexes might not have been the sharpest had they tried to hit me. Anger can make you more physically reflexive meaning my father was more imposing in his physicality than his age would imply.

My mother was smirking at me with a wide smile and invading my personal space. It's harder to say a person was confused by their stress during an altercation when they've an expression of contentment as opposed to anger seeing as it implies deep indifference and vengefulness. Although I don't think a jury could appreciate the sarcasm in a smile. Should anything have happened I'd have been outnumbered 3 to 1 for witnesses. What would a court do when the victim is falsely accused of provocation but by a larger number of people? It's one person's word against another. That's the problem when you're alone and against a group. It's one reason why we've to be proportionate and unaggressive. Moreover a prolonged scowling expression of disgust from others can feel intensely threatening and demeaning even though it's mute and leaves no evidence whatsoever. Insults don't always sound harmful on paper but in person they could make you feel like a bad person and it takes a lot of willpower to overcome any lingering doubts or guilt. If my father and sister weren't disgusted at my passive behaviour then they were pretty much implying that my inner self was somehow disgusting. (In future fights I'll have to change the syntax and claim a person is being an idiot rather than that they are an actual idiot!) I wasn't sure whether their intention was to launch an attack or whether they were instead trying to get me arrested if I'd to defend myself. My father's confused expression soon after his enraged countenance at the door and the way he sulked in his room afterwards made me suspect that he had somehow engaged in a childish thoughtline. This ironically made him look helpless in such a way that I didn't know if he was misreading a sense of nihilism. As such I was a small bit sad for him rather than just being purely angry at him. My parents never raised their hands inwards towards their chests in self-defence at my bedroom door despite how they were threatening me. This implies that they were inciting me in a pure way to strike them first and exploiting my self-restraint. I'd texted my father before arriving at the house that I wanted to leave them and perhaps they were thinking of using this as evidence if a fight erupted.

A few days afterwards I met my younger sister and father at the bus station who both looked away with a blank face. The next week my father sent me a text saying while they were at fault for the escalation that I'd also to accept some blame and responsibility for what happened. It was if it was me who was expected to apologise for their ambush. The pushing was unprovoked and in my view I'd been very charitable to them by offering so many second chances. In the months afterwards they approached me several times on the street telling me to come back but it was insincere because I'd already told them to stay away from me. My father found me at shop while I was heading to tennis. He followed me down the road despite me telling him not to. My father was saying sorry and somehow he didn't see the contradiction in tugging me on the arm. Another time he pulled up in a car beside me at night and pleaded with me to come back home without expressing much remorse. My mother saw me on the street one day and came right up to me to ask me to meet her for tea in a café as if we were still friends. She didn't keep any distance away from me when she could have waved instead had she wanted to express appreciation. They wouldn't even think of using another person as an intermediary or writing a letter to arrange a meeting. I'd to ring them to tell them I'd have to push them away if they try to intimidate me. I got very angry because I knew by contacting them there was a risk they'd incite me further. If they're already warned then you don't need a restraining order to prevent people coming to you repeatedly without your permission. I did try to go to the gardai to get them to warn my parents by phone instead of me doing so. However they replied it was a civil matter and to go to a solicitor even though I wasn't looking to press charges. I viewed the loss of my friendship as enough punishment and went easy on them! Anyway I managed to de-escalate the shouting incident. Although someone else shouting like that to a stranger on the street could very well see them put in jail for a few weeks. They were so self-righteous that I was almost forced to academically disprove them!

I got no hedonistic satisfaction whatsoever in shouting back at them when I'd to leave home and I didn't view this as a form of punishment for them. In fact I found the act of shouting back at them to be painful for me. I was forced to shout in self-defence and never viewed this as an excuse for my parents not to apologise. For example if someone punches you and you punch them back then this doesn't make it even because an ambush is extortionate compared to a consensual boxing fight. Nonetheless in retrospect I might have dazed them by shouting and didn't factor this in when they stalked me. For example retaliating against them during the shouting incident might have destabilised them for the entire period up to the time of the stalking incident without me knowing that they were anxious. Perhaps shouting back at them was a mild form of disciplining even if the shouting on my part was really accidental. As such I should have a been a tiny bit more empathetic to their attempts at apologising even though ignoring them was still proportionate.

My parents were so honest in expressing hatred that it was an ironic consolation. Had my parents not shouted at me then perhaps I'd have been tempted to return to them much earlier without realising how unrepentant they were. The trouble is they were so much older than me that I couldn't emotionally match them where their shouting left a long-lasting mild headache in my psyche. I gained better self-defence skills but it really wasn't what I had intended to spend my time on. Dealing with a family involved in both sensationally positive and negative experiences forced me to be a small bit more stoic then I'd naturally be.

One reason I was so wary of ever trusting them again is because I was uncertain about the extent of their hostility. The trouble is that it's very hard to understand an expression of anger within the seconds you have to interpret it. Had I not managed to push them back and close the door on them, what would've happened? It's a counterfactual so I don't know for certain. Were they just trying to push me around? Or if I let my guard down would they have attacked me further? Or else did they each forget how invasive they appeared when their individual actions are multiplied by the three of them? Did they know themselves what they wanted to do or were they confused? I knew by our previous expressions of love that they simply weren't going to kill me! People are innocent until proven guilty so I won't over-emphasise what didn't happen. Our own subconscious can play tricks on us where we try to pre-empt their reasoning in an rushed manner. For example I knew the mere fact that I'd previously been mentally ill might have made it appear to third parties that it was me being temperamental. Yet it was very cynical of me to come to that idea in the moments I had to respond. Older adults might not realise that their greater experience in life can come across as extreme hyperfocus during a heated argument. It's particularly important for older people not to let a feeling of being out of breath distract you. The contrast in pitch between my father's snarling and my sister's screeching in close succession to each other exposed me to opposite emotional extremes. During the incident their facial expressions were really ambiguous. I don't want to exaggerate it and it's perfectly possible that it was nothing more than a look of annoyance. My ability to read people's emotions is limited by my introverted nature. Yet there was a very small chance that there was an element of dehumanisation in their glare. They might have thought it was my fault for coming close to them even though I'd no choice but to do so in order to reach for the door in front of them. If your parents express hysterical anger then it can feel like they're accidentally demonising you when they were previously being relied on as a source of inspiration. I had simply never seen them act like this before and I may have been confused by such sudden changes in expression. It's not religion's fault but if they misread or rejected a faith system and carelessly yelled against a bit of an agnostic person it can be nerve-wracking simply because it compels you to overcome years worth of their meditative intensity. My father once caught me making facetious faces in the mirror and it's possible that he warped what I had done and lost control of himself. To be honest I'd a bad experience where a relative's teen friends opened my computer with loud porn when I was much younger and I don't know how much dislike this caused. In my defence they shouldn't have searched my property! Another time my father heard me in my room listening to violent songs where I mumbled to myself how I'd kill my family. My headphones meant I couldn't hear myself subvocalising my thoughts. I'm not sure how much he heard or whether he accepted my apology. Years back my mother checked the internet history and saw that I'd watched violent news media. I said it was a selfish mistake though I was gradually coming up with policies to try and overcome such criminals. Whatever their actual intentions were the time I left I was in fear due to their raging emotions. It can be very ironic when you imply that someone is evil as an argumentative strategy only that it really just incites them to be evil. So a good person who is called evil can accidentally be dehumanised even more when they hate most evil people to a hysterical extent as well! Then you'd end up in a paradoxical situation of thoroughly hating the people who call you evil by the mere fact you momentarily have to hate yourself by being reminded of the evil of others recursively. I'd say it was at least 20 minutes of worry from the first push to the time I was out of view in the estate. I'd actually rank this episode to be worse than the time my phone was robbed by a group of teenagers. I got the impression that at least they might obey some kind of street code where as my parents were just in a frenzy! If I put myself in the shoes of my family then it'd feel like I were shouting at a person in the street who'd killed someone and hesitated just to see if they'd surrender. Yet I knew any empty threat to kill me was irrational because my father put up no resistance to being pushed back and they were all shorter than me. Perhaps my father was a small bit psychotic at the time because his mentality didn't make sense relative to his own behaviour. His facial expression seemed psychotic while his speech remained coherent which implied that his internal emotions defied my comprehension. If aggression were to be viewed as a stress test as if they were military drill sergeants then it simply forces you to be spiritually sound rather than being very resilient. I was a bit stressed for a while afterwards often because my sense of connection to their souls diluted. To some extent it was my fault because a pantheist can only view the other person as being separated by death except in a metaphorical way. I was simply forced to conclude that they weren't metaphysically connected to me beyond a trace level of symbolism unless I were to view them as being intensely perverted in how incomprehensible their emotions were. The shouting incident was likely worse than all of the previous incidents with them. Thus despite their apologies their moods had actually gotten worse. Extreme shouting is so distracting and cacophonous that not only can there be a risk of it causing anxiety but also psychosis. As such to say what doesn't kills you makes you stronger can be a bit idealistic if you succumb to mental illness.

I realised I'd been misreading their behaviour all along. My father became manipulative. He'd hide behind cluelessness where he'd say the incident never happened and then just he'd just ignore me. When he was questioned he'd always lie that he was sorry without actually saying what he was sorry for. Or else he'd keep repeating himself and go around in circles. I might advise or prompt him what to say if he seemed unsure where he'd begrudgingly parrot it back and I felt like I was apologising to myself. Meanwhile my mother would cheerfully say sorry for an incident and state what happened without really saying why she was sorry. Weeks later they'd take it back and say they actually weren't sorry. Or else they'd simply forget their last apology. I always knew something was off where in retrospect it was obvious they didn't sound sad or upset when they said sorry. It appeared more defensive than genuine and they never elaborated on it but anyway I somehow felt morally obliged to accept their apology. They often sounded sorry more for themselves in being asked to apologise. I made a mistake in ignoring the emotional tone of the apology where I only focused on the content of what was said. If I told them to say it like they mean it they might say the same thing in a more tense voice. When you tell one lie you've then got to tell more lies just to cover up previous lies so the whole saga continued endlessly. How can you trust someone when there has been an infinite regress of lying about having not lied?! It's almost gotten to the stage where they could apologise for previous fake apologies! In fact the amount of time-wasting was almost worse than the initial incidents. They might get frustrated if I even mentioned it and accuse me of being obsessive. I thought at first they were just a bit anxious or insecure so I gave them more time but then the coercive incidents would repeat and they were well able to socially interact with others so I became more suspicious. They were very intelligent but when they responded to my questions about these incidents they'd temporarily play dumb. Another one of their tactics was to equivocate by contradicting themselves. For example they'd accept full responsibility but add that they'd always the right intentions and just made a mistake. So they'd accept what they did was wrong and yet they'd still maintain that they were never ill-intentioned. Some people are naturally more linguistic or analytical than they are emotional. Thus when people aren't emotional in their personality then they can still show remorse through thoughtful statements even if they're not visibly sad. For example someone who says "I'm sorry man" can often pass as repentant by sheer emotion even if it's not very thoughtful. Moreover an emotion of remorse relates to an unconscious or subconscious sensation that should have fast reflexes in verbal expression no matter how indirect the language. For example a dream works in metaphors, analogies and asides. The dilemma is when there's little direct language being used in an apology without any symbolic allegories of past love either. The problem with emotional people claiming that they're so remorseful it's unspeakable and ineffable is that poetic rap music also deals with complicated feelings of remorse:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ9_TKayu9s

Eminem - Cleanin' Out My Closet

The whole affair was almost becoming an epic! I remember my religion teacher at school despised the words "just" or "only" when someone was apologising for forgetting homework! My parents often added in defensive understatements that they thought they were only trying to help or that it was only their emotions and not their thoughts that got the better of them. They said about the shouting incident how they acted silly or immaturely in a self-effacing way without really acknowledging the severity of the threat they caused. Shouting by accident doesn't make sense because it requires energy. I literally told them numerous times to stop and they refused to do so. If they were experiencing uncontrollable emotions then they could've asked me to leave and come back later. Saying they didn't know the risk of stress doesn't add up when they were warned before each incident. Besides, a true accident tends not to re-occur multiple times seeing as a person would normally be alert after remembering the previous one. Offering a half-hearted partial apology isn't acceptable when they've had such a long period of time to think it through. They'd every trick in the book where they'd claim that nothing they say will work and then use it as an excuse to not to say anything at all. Otherwise they'd give really short and curt apologies where they'd never openly apologise for everything and just give slow and superficial drip-drip statements instead. If someone is really motivated to express remorse for serious incidents then at the very least they'd hardly be running out of things to say after the first few sentences. Spending little time thinking about what they're going to say shows a real lack of effort and commitment. I'm not trying to be difficult but saying a one-worded "sorry" or a few vague statements doesn't really work when past apologies were broken. They'd even state emphatically that they'd do anything they could to change the past if they were able to. Yet all the parts of the apology were never said in one interaction. My father could really annoy me where I'd ask him about his apology and then he'd state that he already said sorry where he wouldn't have to prove it any further. If I got angry with him for ignoring me then he'd try not to interact with me on the basis I was angry. It just seemed a bit smart-alec. It'd be as if I was being arrogant by asking him to apologise. Or what if we tried empathy in reverse? Had I shouted at someone then this wouldn't be the way I'd go about expressing my remorse. Just how ill-intentioned would I have to be in order to motivate myself to carry out the shouting incident to someone else?

Early one morning they were threatening to call the police on a made-up assault claim if I didn't attend a repeat year school meeting at Flannans College but then months later they couldn't remember it and said I was confused and had hallucinated the incident. Sometimes they tried to mix it up with another imagined incident somewhere else when we were supposedly driving back from holidays in Kerry. When I was in hospital years ago they went to a meeting with my psychiatrist and lied where they got him to say that I had hallucinated everything. My Indian psychiatrist was attentive and helpful but disagreed with my attitude towards my parents and said I was obsessed about such "trivial" complaints. He might have been deceived by my parents because they tried to convince him. I was patient with my parents because I initially thought they were so ashamed of the incident that they were just embarrassed to admit it happened. Judging by later behaviour though it was clearly only their attempt to ignore me further. He said once how in fact it did happen but emphasised that he didn't actually call the police. It was as if he felt that it was acceptable to threaten me so long as he didn't actually act on the threat. He apologised years later and of course he later took it back and said that it never happened. There was simply a lack of adrenaline in his apologies where he'd try to deflect the questions. He engaged in continuous lying where he'd sometimes say whatever he thought I wanted him to say. He'd even offer me advice or book counselling sessions and claim that I was suffering PTSD. Indeed I was stressed but I was stressed only at his behaviour. On one occasion he said a prayer for us to heal. Whenever I asked him to apologise he'd always say that I was vengeful and obsessive because it was stretching on for so long even though the only reason I'd to keep asking him was because he kept lying. Obviously if he was honest the first time then I would've never needed to ask him again. I'd almost solve the world's most intractable problems just by dealing with my parents! My father was unnaturally averse to apologising and one time alleged hysterically that I was asking him to get down on his knees and beg for forgiveness. Or else he'd give mock apologies and ask me repeatedly if I respected him. Maybe he felt invincible and viewed apologising as a sign of subservience or weakness. Or perhaps he was simply too afraid to own up to his mistakes. Sometimes he could be kind and compassionate but other times he could be a silly and condescending person. My father's personality seemed to change over the years where he could be increasingly quick-tempered when I was in my late teens even though he was always calm when I was a child. Some of his behaviour didn't vibe with his former self where his relaxed nature became more inattentive in tone. Maybe the ageing process made him stress more often. He didn't drink too often and he was sober the time I was forced to leave the house. Yet who knows if vestiges of a distant drunken memory could have impaired his anger control in that incident. He often had a sensitive demeanour when I was a teenager where I was worried that getting angry with his excuses could destabilise him. For example he'd boast that he sent me to the best school money could buy as if he'd be depressed if I disagreed. This was before my own mental illnesses where I really didn't know how to deal with my father's antagonism if he was potentially a small bit mentally ill.

They got panicked sometimes and overreacted. There might be periods where I was speaking to my mother and not my father or else it could be vice versa. It was as if they took it in turns to deal with me. The risk is if you spend too long with someone who has unpredictable behaviour then they might take you for granted. I briefly fell out with both of them together in 2016 but they knocked on the door of my rental studio early one morning with sad faces and perhaps a tear. They asked me to give them another chance and I obliged. I was being slightly deceived since they didn't give a detailed apology yet judging by their expressions I hoped for the best. I don't know why someone would want to be loving one day and uninterested the next unless they just enjoyed the melodrama. I sometimes let my mother off the hook because I thought my father was the ringleader. But I don't know how they make their decisions together and perhaps I was being presumptuous.

One reason I was so uncertain about them is that they also went through these longer phases. In 2nd year of secondary school I was often with my mother and sister in the house because my father worked in Dublin for several days each week. My mother and sister were often cross and mute where my mother didn't initially say happy birthday when I was 16. Then in 4th year my mother's attitude towards me seemed to really improve. I wasn't sure if it was my father who convinced her to change but I was much happier with her. We often got on very well where we'd frequently bring the dog for a walk together and I thought our relationship would stay very positive. For years it was going relatively good but I could tell that they were slowly slipping back to their old ways in the months before I had to leave them. If I got frustrated with my father and rang him for an explanation he'd always tell me to wait until he was back from Dublin. Thus I'd to learn to both control and coldly preserve my anger for days until he arrived. Anyway it's not as if meeting him in person was any improvement. In retrospect this was very idealistic and placed a toll on my emotional regulation.

My parents visited me while I was in hospital as per the psychology blog. They bought me food shopping so I thought afterwards that they changed for good and they were always going to be nice and so it was a big shock to me that they later regressed. In hindsight they didn't actually visit me quite as much as I thought they had when they were held up at work. Needless to say I had uncles and other relatives visiting too. I arranged to visit my father in Athlone where my mother drove me up and yet she refused to book a room in a hotel for us to chat and I was left wandering outside for a long time. It wasn't mean or unhelpful for them to do so but it was a bit ungrateful given that I offered to leave the hospital to meet them. Nonetheless I'd often extra appreciation for their company in hospital because it was sometimes quiet in there. I was thankful that they drove me to the hospital the first time after my panic attack. I didn't know at first how grateful I should be. Had they not drove me down then I wouldn't have received all of the help from the staff. Yet a car journey is a relatively straightforward affair where the rest of the stay was serendipitous to some extent. These are the grey areas when we think about remorse. I was in such stress that any help at all seemed like a godsend. With apparent kindness my mother offered to clear out my apartment while I was in hospital saying that my landlord was reselling it only to realise weeks later that it was in fact my mother who had asked the landlord to end the lease. I had tried to reduce my interaction with them previously by renting elsewhere because they often behaved well during short visits. I was one year in a rented studio room. I was in hospital for such a long time that there were brief stages where we didn't get along. I'd told them not to visit me during the days after the apartment fiasco and yet they arrived blankly nonetheless. A week after my first stint in hospital I was ordered by an out-patient nurse to return to hospital. I failed to do a symbolic resit of my leaving cert exams because I'd spent the past few years pre-occupied by other issues. I was really just trying to get low pass grades by memory of my previous study during 2013 with my first leaving cert attempt. Anyway the anxiety during my first stint in hospital had made me too disorganised to reconsider the exams. I was reluctant to return to hospital when I knew my parents had misreported the severity of my state of mind. The trouble is psychiatric staff don't always know how the patients get on with their friends and families. Coincidentally the anxiety kick-started a few days after my second trip to hospital. I was initially angry about returning even though in hindsight it was welcome seeing as I never anticipated being anxious again. Thus I let my parents off the hook when extreme mental illness can complicate family relations. For all I knew the psychiatric team might have made an independent decision to bring me back even without my parents' tips. My father was particularly frustrating with regards psychotic medication. He sternly advised me that I should start the tablets even though in later years he was adamant that I should be off them. Honestly I didn't mind the tablets and pretty much just viewed them as pre-emptive and precautionary. While taking them I didn't notice a big change in stress levels for example. So sometimes I was simply bothered by how vocal he'd be despite how he changed his mind so often! My mother brought me to the cinema while I was anxious and so I can't be too critical towards them. My parents also brought me for short drives to neighbouring villages for walks and coffee to help relieve my anxiety. Furthermore I stayed a few nights at my parents' house to break up my stay at the acute psychiatric ward. I was 4 years in subsidised accommodation even though it was initially intended for me to stay there no more than 6 weeks. I stayed at my parents' house over Christmas periods each year but was never confident about returning for longer stints. I felt a better option was to just hang out with them for a few hours every weekend. Usually I'd skip the first 20 minutes of mass on Sundays and meet them for a coffee afterwards! A problem is that despite being overprotective of me in the psychiatric ward the incidents in later years might have meant they were less interested in my mental health during my stay in hospital than I suspected.

We're mortal so 6 months after the shouting rant I gave them an opportunity and briefly tried to have a small, distant friendship with them but it didn't work out. I eventually realised that they were saying sorry just so they could lull me back and have an opportunity to reject me again a few days later. They might fail to reply or take a minute to think of an incident that they were meant to be saying sorry for. It'd be strange for a repentant person to take self-indulgent breaks during an apology. It forced me to reinterpret my understanding of the Christian notion to be forever forgiving. The best I could do was give them chances but I can't sacrifice my life waiting around for them to be honest. I tried to get them to change and failed. I've invested a lot of time trying to be friendly with them but if I return to them and were another incident to occur after a few months then that will be another long time with them wasted. What if I were to sustain a physical injury if they ever resurrected their anger? Another disruptive incident could cause me much stress. Even if there won't be another major incident there might still be a risk of frustration if they start ignoring me or lying to me again. When I forgave them in the past I could detect that they weren't very grateful for me doing so. One time I forgave my father and we went for a walk in the woods afterwards. Yet he felt no hesitation at all in criticising me about my career choices even though we were literally just back friends. Another time I forgave him and he offered to give me a lift back to my hometown. However he picked up my sister as well even though he knew the two of us weren't getting along at the time. These instances just seemed very presumptuous for someone who claimed he had missed me so much in the hours beforehand. I didn't decide to leave out of one incident in isolation but rather it's the repetition of incidents that show a lack of care. Previously my mother wrote me a letter in which the apology was two lines and the remaining pages were only about herself, her extended family and casual small talk. If they're not sorry then I 'd almost prefer them to say so than to waste my time pretending that they are. You can't force people to say sorry since they won't stick to it. I was almost paranoid that my fading memory would deceive me into forgiving them one day. Whatever happened the shouting incident was so tiring that it was almost ignored from my recall.

A year after the fracas I retried contacting them. I told them we could have a distant relationship where I might ring them rarely as an acquaintance so long as they were willing to explain themselves. Minimal contact isn't too much of a risk. They said they were sorry and that they were thinking about me for the year. Yet they soon showed indifference in that they spoke in a tired and unmotivated way. My father's tone of voice was almost blasé as if he were speaking to a work colleague. Everything they said seemed like they were making it up on the spot. The inconsistencies of their statements began to appear. They even blamed me for not being able to speak with me to apologise even though I had to avoid them because they were so rude in the instances that we did communicate. I could tell that they weren't thoroughly remorseful by their hesitation. My mother asked how I was and pretended to chat even though I was asking her to say sorry. She wasn't being serious and asked if she could fly over to meet me when I was away. It seemed like she was trying to laugh it off in an upbeat voice. She still insisted that she was only trying to offer me a lift even though she knew that she was intimidating me by coming near me and entering into my room. She didn't mind threatening me with my father and sister but somehow she expected me to believe that she actually cared about me getting a cheaper lift with her. She'd overheard my father shouting at me and had tried to block me leaving. She also brought in my clothes right after the confrontation as a sarcastic excuse to come right beside me. Yet when I told her this she dismissed it and claimed she was merely acting a bit childish at the time.

If someone is slightly honest then I think you only need to slightly forgive them. They seemed somewhat less insincere than the previous attempt but it didn't seem like they'd undergone any major conversion. I remembered my father's formulaic apology in the car before the shouting incident meaning that I had a reference point that his apology should be more intense than. I told them I wasn't yet willing to restart any contact with them but that I didn't dislike them as much as I used to. I added that if they ever find it in them to be wholeheartedly apologetic then we could resume a distant sort of contact. I also advised them to write down their thoughts so that they'll know what they want to say. I've to be analytical because we don't have an unlimited reserve of resilience, patience or recovery and so the frustration of dealing with temperamental people can risk undermining your own emotional stability. Anyway incident plus year and a half my father eventually emailed me a more substantive apology. It was over a page long so I decided to restart slight contact through post or phone but I don't think we'll be meeting in person anytime soon. The time away was a sufficient warning even if I can't be certain that he's 100% sorry. I rang him after his email to ensure his speech was consistent with what he wrote. My mother rejected the opportunity and didn't immediately reply to my email. If she hasn't changed her attitude after such a long period of time then it's unlikely she'll change drastically in the near future. A month later she sent a more helpful apology and I said we can be slight friends. For almost two years I never received any attempted apology from my sister and only bare assertions from my father that she was in some way remorseful. The fact that my father made little attempt to talk to my mother or sister about their behaviour places a limit on how much I can accept him back into my life.

An elderly assistant told me how both her parents are dead and we've to appreciate them or we might not get another chance. I agreed with her sentiment but at the same time children aren't immortal and the responsibility also extends in the other direction! The problem with using extreme reference points like death is that they often require other extreme reference points for comparison. So obviously if I died I'd think they'd really miss me. Yet if I went away for decades and never came back then it's logically possible that they might only care once I had died. It doesn't necessarily have to take the form of them feeling a slow build-up of grief the older you get. This is why amorality can be much trickier than immorality for understanding others. Death is so absurd that an amoral person could justify any disposition at all no matter how little sense it made to you. When I say hello to them I'll address them by their first names until I'm more confident in them because they weren't always proper parents. I thought by leaving them they'd eventually give a truly wholehearted apology given enough time. I envisioned us being a small bit closer. Yet I realised that those reasonable apologies were probably going to be the best I could ever get out of them. Hence I needed to compromise our potentially closer friendship in the future by allowing them a distant friendship at an earlier stage. There's a small risk of a plateau in a distant relationship where the others would be content with that level of contact. Unfortunately I can't afford to rely on some kind of enlightenment for them in the future!

To be honest I'd made a few defensive mistakes. I should've left immediately instead of packing my bags in order to have reduced the risk of them following me upstairs. I knew there was a slight chance that they'd break their apology by perhaps being rude but I thoroughly underestimated the risk of a physical altercation. Previously I'd tentatively re-friended them on a trial period but I should've kept more of a distance at the beginning instead of being back home with them for the week. Some of my past impatience towards them was due to a lack of help but seeing as I was becoming more independent I felt that this would no longer be an issue anymore. I was too optimistic and naive in accepting so many untrustworthy apologies. I was often a bit isolated in the past and so I was always tempted to meet back up with them. This is why having a wide circle of alternative friends could help buffer a troubled friendship. I always assumed that he had temporary bouts of insecurity but the way he shouted made it clear that he was demeaning my own experience of insecurity. Ironically they thought I should let them off the hook for the way they didn't withstand a few moments of stress when they pretty much humiliated me for my months of anxiety. When he shouted it seemed like it was his extreme anger that had made him anxious rather than it being the other way round. It was as if his rage put him in a trance because I'd never seen him act so bad before. I think he often had sleepless nights that would aggravate his stress. This might have been worsened by a very high caffeine intake where he often had coffee late into the evening. He also seemed to have stressful periods at work where he sometimes had to do irregular hours. The problem though is that while this might account for some of his impatience, it fails to excuse the extended timeframe of ignoring me. After all he wasn't working every day of every year. His role as an IT manager probably meant he was less aware of when he was trying to micromanage my future. He'd appear sensitive when he'd justify stern advice on the basis that he didn't get much advice when he was younger.

Additionally I made a few personal mistakes. I used to dwell a lot after I left them and often felt angry. Instead I should focus more on adjusting well to my current goals so that I'm less tempted to think of them so frequently. Besides, we cannot know for certain the inner reasons why people behave one way or another. Unless they choose to verbalise their feelings the most we can do is hazard a guess seeing as we can't read their mind. My father sometimes expressed unusual though private political positions and it's hard to know if such beliefs could affect their personality in a temperamental way. It can cause a lot of headaches when you try to rationally analyse the irrational actions of others. The week before my parents yelled at me they'd discussed each incident and said they regretted it. So logically it can only be the case that either they'd a sudden change of mind afterwards or else they were mostly lying while they said it. The fact that the week passed quietly until the screaming started strongly implies they were being dishonest when they claimed they were contrite. I recall my mother giving me a lift where she seemed untalkative and monosyllabic. My father would ignore me when I asked him to clarify the apology he had given me since I'd to double check he was still on board. They appeared tired of me instead of being happy that I'd given them another chance. They were distant towards me in the days before the shouting. I had told them I didn't like them anymore in a non-threatening manner for how they were behaving in the moments before their hateful and degrading tirade. Even if I over-reacted by using a curse word as an emphasiser and intensifier rather than as an insult they were still being very vengeful. Perhaps it's the very fact that I almost never use curse words that if ever I say them when I'm angry I might appear very hateful by contrast. I was helping crime victims on my gun control thread such that my charity would have been impaired had I been injured in the shouting incident. So it's possible that my father had privately hated some of my blog even though he became tolerant and liked my tennis and sleep threads.

My father often made me ask him again and again for help where he'd pretend that he was considering it. For example when I asked him about going to a grinds school he replied that he wouldn't because he was going to send my younger sister there in the future instead. She never asked to go and it was only his attempt to pit us against each other. That might sound petty but it was just the negative tone that bothered me. We went to interviews in several grinds schools but he'd never give a definitive answer as if he was trying to prank me. The arguments forced me to really improve my debating skills! He really burdened me because he kept telling me to ask him in a week's time where after months he'd never give a clear answer. Once he even replied that he couldn't because he claimed he had to help my sisters instead. The irony is that rarely he'd angrily accuse me of harassing him despite him being evasive on the issue of a different school. Immediately after my leaving cert didn't work out he said he was going to send my sister to boarding school in a sarcastic way.

I tried to be patient and optimistic because we were once great friends where they gave me lifts, cooked me meals and brought me to restaurants, bought me presents, went on nice drives each weekend and also annual holidays. I'd often go hiking and play tennis or hurling with my father. My mother always gave me an extreme amount of help with my chores. Another way they helped me was with occasional financial allowances. They were often tolerant of me sleeping-in on weekends! I was confused about whether I should let it go even if they weren't sorry. That's what I tried doing. I rarely asked them to make up for an incident because I felt that if they were half-sorry then they'd gradually pay it back in emotional support if we stayed together. Maybe I should've demanded more collateral upfront! I wasn't sure how indebted I was to them for having had a pleasant childhood. Parents are an almost inescapable part of your identity where they've raised you for so long. In all honesty my objectivity is limited because I'd be less conflicted about having to estrange myself from a person outside of my family. I'm not happy to leave anyone and I do wish they were nicer in the past where we would still be friends. Some people however just prefer being selfish. I'm not sure how sincere they were even when they appeared loving given just how much they'd ignore me when I was angry with them. Maybe some of their kindness when I was younger was for cultural reasons. How friendly would they have been if I met them from another family?! We only know our parents as adults and don't know much about their childhood. Another reason I was patient towards them is that I knew they had slightly stressful periods in their past with work and so forth that are confidential to them. They also both had to grieve for the deaths of relatives. But sometimes people slowly change for the worse over many years and there's nothing we can do about it. Another aspect that is private is that I knew they both encountered a briefly aggressive but overall nice person in their lives. However they unjustly activated their reflexes and reflected some of that frustration on me when they blocked the door that time. It's my worry about potential future incidents rather than just my anger at past incidents that makes me cautious about fully returning to them. I'm not trying to be vengeful by reducing contact but I've to counterbalance two opposing principles: to be forgiving while also erring on the side of caution. The dilemma is that we're encouraged to be merciful but we're also warned that it's better to be safe than sorry! It can be saddening when I think of the potential amount of happiness we could have all had together in the time lost but we can't make the decisions of others. When you reach adulthood your parents can feel less responsible for you such that any previous pretence of friendliness can disappear quite quickly.

Long-term friendships can be beset by a series of minor incidents that have an exhausting and accumulative effect rather than a single major incident. There were a lot of these smaller incidents where they might try to embarrass me, pressurise me or undermine my goals. I used to put it down to them merely being confused but I can now see from later incidents that it was really out of ill-intention. Sometimes they'd conceal hostility in the guise of help. For example they tried locking me in my room and then the house until I would agree to go to a 4 month stay in a hospital in Dublin but I managed to escape them over the garden fence. They started doing more harm than good overall. They didn't give me good advice during my study for the leaving cert where they wouldn't allow me to self-study more often instead of attending class in 4th year even though I was falling behind. Although I can't blame them for this when there was too much uncertainty around all of my other study plans and goals. I could even have self-studied the entirety of 4th year but my parents wouldn't have always been friendly had been at home all the time. After all school is only mandatory up to the junior cert where some seek apprenticeships instead of the leaving cert. Truth be told if I went down the self-study option permanently in 4th year then I'd almost have had to leave home. Yet to do that I'd almost need foster care which might have been too extreme. I wasn't in danger of child poverty at home but in our capitalist system I'd have been at risk of adult poverty without an intense education where staying in hostels for 4th year might not have been too extreme in hindsight. It's possible that my grandmother would have allowed me extra study time at her house had I only went to school in 4th year on a part-time basis or perhaps I could simply have used the public library more often as a study facility. Anyway I can only blame myself for having not repeated my leaving cert in the years since. When I left my leaving cert my father was constantly panicking. He tried waking me up in the middle of the night to do my exams. He then tried to reschedule my exam to a local school. I literally had to tell him to f' off to stop him harassing me which was my first time cursing at him. Even though it was me who should've been upset by the exams, I was actually forced into a position of having to console my father who appeared to be depressed. I tolerated it at first because I thought he had anxiety and was just worried about me but I soon realised by his hateful accusations that he was just using it as an excuse to seriously harass me. I literally had to bring him out for walks to try and calm him down. They'd accuse me of being ungrateful and imply that they preferred my siblings by saying they'd help them instead of me. It wasn't actually them that funded me and yet they claimed that I'd wasted their money. My father taunted me that I should have never switched schools. My mother said that my sister's friend was better than me for going to university. My father started ringing up my school about my exams and tried to turn it into a fiasco. He told my principal about confidential mistakes I made in my exams without asking me for permission. I eventually forgave them because they used to help me with pocket money during my school years. He didn't say sorry but I felt he had pre-emptively made up for it. Perhaps I forgave them prematurely and should have stayed at a relative's house for a few weeks break after my leaving cert even if I couldn't stay longer-term. I was too distracted by my own uncertainty in my plans to realise just how hostile they had been over my exams. A stitch in time saves nine and maybe I should have been more assertive with them from the outset. Later my father would book career guidance sessions and tell me never to ask him for anything ever again if I wouldn't go with him. He'd often use these career guidance sessions as a way to delay my decision-making in the hope that the career councillors would agree with my father rather than with me. The career guidance councillors often gave good advice but my father's intentions weren't too sincere. I went easy on them because they gave me free accommodation and they kept me company. On second thought do we really owe our parents for this?! I might have made a mistake in not being more assertive with them in the beginning because I always imagined that they'd improve. Had I somehow known in advance that they were only going to keep getting worse then I would have left them much earlier. We knew each other so long that I never envisioned having to end our friendship. In other incidents my father didn't say no and instead always lied that he was going to do something only to cancel in the last moment. He booked interviews in Dublin for an Open University course and agreed to be a guarantor for a loan and then waited until the deadlines had passed. It was frustrating and extortionate but he'd think nothing of doing these type of things. There was a complex issue where they didn't think it'd be worthwhile to do a 3rd level distance course for two years just to apply to another brick university undergraduate course afterwards as I'd already be a graduate. In other words I wouldn't have a competitive advantage over other secondary school applicants as I'd be assessed differently. However they didn't understand that my plans with the Open University was open-ended where I could've committed to distance learning for many years. They weren't allowing me to make my own career decisions and my father flippantly told me that I'd thank him when I was older for avoiding the Open University. The way he lied about the Open University resembled his statements about moving to the grinds school in 5th year. This made me suspect that were it not for my aunt my father would have ditched at the last moments of switching school. I also suspected that the way he lied about the open university was out of spite at my failed leaving cert attempt when it was none of his business. I got angry about it when the deadlines past and mistakenly cursed at him. However he came right up to me and tried to stare me down. Thankfully it was brief and he was mute but his willingness to be aggressive about my education reflected a possessive mindset. He gave me a small bit of financial compensation for messing up the OU which is why I tolerated him in the months afterwards.

I didn't immediately have the funds to leave my parents' house after my leaving cert but I was trying to leave because they were being unkind. I was so desperate that I was even considering living in a car. Yet years later my father disparaged me when he spoke of me living in a car in a really silly voice. They'd imply that they weren't going to give me much funds for any university. Despite living in their house for over a year after my leaving cert I often had to be a bit reserved to them during the day if they weren't being open. I was at an airport where he made up a whole story about speaking to a manager and got me to leave a queue for ticket resales only to be delayed for 5 hours in having to re-join the queue. I'd warned him beforehand that there was an enormous queue forming behind me and that I was almost at the desk but he convinced me to leave. I rang him afterwards and told him the assistant never heard of his verbal confirmation. I asked my father the name of the manager he spoke to and he went blank. I was half thinking of getting a flight back home instead of going on a holiday out to see him. It wasn't just that he had hassled me so much but that the lies were also insulting in how he was trying make a fool of me. I phoned him again where he jumbled his words and acted like he had never made me leave the queue. I forgave him even though he didn't say sorry solely because it was himself who had paid for the ticket. I flew out to him where he was nice for the remainder of the holiday in Qatar. In hindsight I could almost have visited the city of Abu Dhabi in UAE during the flight change. Although it's possible there'd still be a big queue had I returned to the airport in the evening. When someone is always mean it can be straightforward to avoid them but it's when the person has mixed good and bad behaviour like my parents that it can become very confusing in how to respond. Sometimes passive-aggressiveness can be worse than blatant, active aggression because it can be more time-consuming and it's easier to conceal it as being unintentional. Unfortunately my father can struggle to understand basic empathy. He bought himself an apartment to lease out to others and then deceived my grandmother that it was for me. I had to kindly decline my grandmother's offer of thousands of euros to help with a mortgage and had to explain to her that he was lying. I'd told him from the beginning that I didn't want it and he never consulted me. It was nothing more than a ploy. They often tried to make me feel guilty where they'd claim I was extorting them and being selfish. I remember going on a tennis holiday after my junior cert for a week that I paid for myself. My parents however had thoroughly vilified me in the months beforehand where I couldn't get a lot of enjoyment out of the break because I felt so stressed. When I challenged him about his behaviour afterwards he denied that much was said. He also engaged in favouritism by openly supporting the holidays of others later on. Yet my parents gave me allowances when we remade contact while I was abroad for tennis in 2021 and helped me to extend my trip. Thus they've redeemed themselves tennis-wise! My mother gave me a backhanded compliment how she knows that I'd never hit her when I never once threatened to do so. We were heading up to a relative's wedding where my parents were giving me unwanted advice and telling me to "shut up". My mother and older sister were in a fit about being late. The only reason I stayed with them was because I was worried they'd be angry to my father if I wasn't with him. It didn't occur to them how inappropriately they behaved but they relaxed as the evening progressed. I think I would have been a bit happier as a teenager had they only acted nicer. I was getting a reward for tennis at school where I was slightly frustrated that my mother didn't collect me on time. She thoroughly lambasted me and decided to stop and accelerate the car repeatedly before I could get out. The problem is that it's very hard to enjoy the rest of the evening after something like that even if they're no longer with you. There was once a large airplane viewing event at a nearby airport where we drove down. We missed it but got caught in traffic. I was frustrated that we didn't turn back. Yet she became argumentative and didn't speak for the rest of the journey. My psychologist once recommended that I go to an autism specialist for a diagnosis. My parents paid over a thousand euro for the meeting and so I was very grateful towards them. I told the specialist how I could be a bit obsessive at times and the meeting was mostly a success. But my mother really went overboard to the specialist and started implying that I was unsympathetic to a relative's funeral by coming home for school exams the day after the funeral in second year. Her statement might have been accidental out of stress but it was completely mistaken by how I'd went up to visit the terminally ill relative in hospital and had been there for the actual funeral. My father had also implied that I was really cross at my first school during my leaving cert. Yet I was cross at my parents at the time rather than with the school because they weren't listening to my specific career goals. I'd to get angry with them during a coffee break in the meeting to get them to stop harassing me where the rest of the interview went well. The way they kindly paid for it but ended up insulting me was reflective of a very unstable relationship I was having with my parents. A few years after my leaving cert my father rang me out of nowhere and demanded I attend an interview at Limerick Tutorial College. He had never consulted me and had simply tried to revive his memory of blackmailing me to go back to Flannans College. Indeed he was willing to pay for my repeat year but being bossy defeats the purpose of being nice. Anyway the list goes on! I better not write down every little incident or I'll end up writing a book!

Eventually I'd to stop seeing my aunt, psychologist and life coach who all disagreed with me! I told my aunt about the incident who later decided to join in. I was walking back from tennis when she drove past me and angrily claimed I was a few minutes late. She was scowling and I felt she was getting frustrated over nothing. But when we got back to her house her bad behaviour continued. She dismissed my experience of mental illness and my "anxiety". Then she'd carry in my bags to make it look as though I was the aggressor where I'd have to go back in and get them off her. When I did so she was poking me as hard as she could and saying a wry sorry each time. She had an expression of curiosity combined with dislike that upset my sense of self. Staring from a close distance can be mentally possessive even though it wasn't a physical threat. That could be yet another potential problem with provocation and physical proximity even when it's from a smaller person where someone would be framed for a crime. She was really trying to tempt me into pushing her. I don't know whether I should have poked her back because she was very stubborn. I was already exhausted before the incident as my aunt had collected me earlier in the day when my landlord forced me to leave my rented room in Newmarket-on-Fergus. I'd spent the previous night and morning packing my bags. I also got into an argument about paying for a dislodged toilet seat in the landlord's house. I thought the screw was already loose on it but ended up having to compromise with paying half of the cost! The poking incident confused me as my aunt was very helpful in the past and helped pay for my school in Galway for the year but people can change their temperament very quickly. I think she was trying to copy my mother by following me around without my permission. I called a taxi as I'd a lot of bags but she deceitfully kept pestering me about giving me a lift. She said sorry weeks later but it was in a defiant and argumentative manner where she'd minimise what happened and demand that I accept it. I met her again a month after where she was at another relative's house and she just chased me around asking if I wanted a cup of tea and ignored my requests for her to step back. She used to make me dinners each Sunday and so I was surprised by her sudden indifference. We often went on trips together when I was younger so I'd have naturally viewed her as a good friend. She said one or two underhand things that peeved me in the past but I let it go because she was usually friendly. She once claimed I was too self-aware to be anxious, repeated flippant statements about my struggle with shin splints saying that I was too young to have muscle aches and other times she became really hostile towards me about my hygiene where she'd reject me as a friend if I wouldn't allow her to follow me around with deodorant. Two years after my leaving cert she asked me if I'd a mental illness for not repeating my exams in a way that was dismissive. She followed suit with my mother and sent me an email in the months after the breakup of our friendship asking how I was doing as if nothing had happened between us. In other words it was my fault that we weren't speaking in her view. Years back my aunt had offered me an office helper role as work experience in a legal company where she was an employee. There was a person who was on extended leave over a hip operation that I was filling in for. I was very grateful as I was there for over a year. Yet we didn't interact too often given how rare it might be to have relatives in a workplace. Although we sometimes got the train after work together or got lunch as well. She was always very busy at work I suppose. It's these ambiguities in how well-intentioned she was that confused me in the period after we fell apart. Anyway we often went hillwalking together on the odd weekend when I was a teenager and some forms of spiritual company aren't quantifiable. My aunt has a sharp voice naturally from her legal work and so it's possible she wasn't fully self-aware of how intense she looked when she was angry. My aunt was a bit of a workaholic where it's possible that she was willing to annoy me over nothing knowing that I could withstand her just so that she could learn to control her temper for all of her other friends. When people try to scapegoat someone stronger than them it can feel perverted because they're complimenting you as strong while behaving in a way that's really foolish in an extortionate way. It's almost a way of parentifying you.

I used to get on well with my psychologist for a long time. She helped me understand interpersonal skills. But then all of a sudden she started bringing up the subject of my parents in each session against my will. She'd ignore my comments, ask the same questions repeatedly and just accuse me of being obsessive. She said that other people had gone through worse as if it were some kind of masochist competition! Even though I showed her the video of my parent's behaviour she'd still give blunt orders for me to meet up with them without ever bothering to give an explanation as to why I should. At that time I had told my father that he could attend therapy or perhaps do a small bit of volunteering to show he was serious about improving his behaviour. I had given my psychologist permission to speak with my parents and she implied that my parents didn't want to go to therapy because they were viewing me as the problem. Despite this my psychologist was still adamant that I meet up with them. She had read my blog too so I don't know if she disagreed with me over that. Whatever her reasons she didn't listen to my warnings to change topic and after several sessions of this I'd to end our meetings.

My life coach was pleasant at first. She gave me advice on career paths. But then she offered to talk with my parents under the guise of mediation. She reported that my parents said that not much happened in the shouting incident and that I was exaggerating it even though they were saying sorry to me in the weeks beforehand. Afterwards she changed her mind and seemed to agree with them saying that she was a parent herself. I'd to stop seeing her after she repeatedly urged me in each appointment to accept their offer of renting an apartment. I told her we could still be friends but I'd to end the meetings. She was generous by offering me all of the appointments we had for free as part of her training and so I didn't want to blame her. They could all be very nice but they became too judgemental. People can be biased when they're also friendly with your adversaries and didn't see the incident first-hand.

Sometimes forgiveness is simply too complex to be consciously understood. There are fundamental limits to how much we can tell if someone is being honest or deceitful. For example there are a host of tiny inferential cues that rely on what isn't said or emphasised that are far too vague to be proven. My parents' facial complexions both looked different when I met them after I returned from over a year abroad. Yet this could probably be down to simple ageing rather than them being double agents. I noticed my father's voice was a bit quicker as if his personality had extra adrenaline. Yet I could just as easily say his voice was more reflective of his Dublin upbringing. Sometimes my mother would appear slightly happier than the conversation called for. Or perhaps her social skills aren't the greatest even though she's still far more extroverted than me. Maybe my father didn't always express exuberant gratitude for my forgiveness of him even though he expressed intense and sincere remorse. Alternatively it's me who's at fault for limiting his emotions by keeping him a bit distant. I could even psychoanalyse my father in how he rarely displays a tint of nervousness when he does something kind with me as if it were somehow out of character. Yet I'm in no position to work out someone's spiritual disposition. At the end of the day forgiveness can always be justified to prevent the perpetrator getting worse in their own faith beliefs or their actions towards others even if they don't morally improve simply because our capacity to change them is minute.

People say to love your family and ideally that would always be true but it's much harder when others don't always reciprocate. They say we don't get to choose our family and I suppose that means they're really just random people. We don't tend to remember much of our early childhood and so it can be difficult to factor how appreciative we should be for their help. Nature determines our fellow family members. It's almost like young children are genetically hard-wired to love their parents. Therefore it's very hard to break the evolutionary bond. They weren't always a caring family and having finally recovered from my mental illness I'd then to start recovering again from their threatening antics after the shouting episode. I was at a very mild risk of psychosis given that I'd not only anxiety but also prodromal psychosis in prior years. I can't fully understand anyone's hateful emotions being waged against me because I'm not able to be angrily self-hating so as to read their mind. The way my father didn't look too self-aware might be an emotional mitigating factor but worsened the unpredictability of a physical threat given that he appeared to be somehow rebelling against his own subjective ethics. A dilemma with mental illness is that minor impairments might not be noticeable. So maybe the way my father appeared to objectify me during the shouting incident might relate to him literally not understanding my mind as if I were a stranger. Psychosis isn't a militant strategy used by soldiers but might appear threatening in a verbal confrontation if the psychosis was an attempt to disorient someone. For example wildly shouting "Wahhh" means you don't want to be self-controlled in any way even if it's not a direct threat. In other words violence can be rooted in silliness despite the potentially serious consequences:

Conor McGregor - Creepy smirk

Refriending them too early might have risked compromising my ethics, benevolence and spirituality towards others in general. I'm not a saint and being extra forgiving yet again towards my family likely might have exhausted my patience towards my other friends and acquaintances. Scapegoating strangers is never acceptable but I've to be self-aware that my reserves of empathy are finite. They ended up aggravating all the problems that I already had seeing as I was looking for rent and changing life plans when they decided that now was the time to push me out of the family. It's a lonesome feeling for the length of time you've to avoid your parents where it almost makes you feel orphaned. I imagine people born into large families must probably have a master's degree equivalent in crisis management and conflict resolution! It’s safe to say a few situations went a bit beyond them! I remember trying to study and sometimes I’d hear dance beats humming in the background from my sister’s room. I used to try to block it out with white noise or earmuffs. She'd always be very reluctant to use headphones. Rarely I might even bounce the tennis ball around in my room to get her to turn the music down. My parents usually allowed her to turn it up and so I used to always go to my grandmother's house for homework in secondary school. At this stage I’m so accustomed to studying under adverse conditions that thankfully I’m less distractable and can study on the move! My sisters never interacted a lot with me so I'm not sure how much difference it makes to them that they left me in 2020. My parents often allowed them to dislike me. I sometimes got on well with my sisters but our different ages meant we were never extremely close. We often talked to each other at Christmas periods and over family reunions. At least I still get on well with my younger brother, grandmothers and others in my extended family. If anyone else criticises me about my parents then I'll say no more and just direct them to this thesis! I admit it was probably disproportionate of me to have written about them beside the criminal killer section of the blog! I always go public pre-emptively about arguments I've been in so as to give a better first impression before my opponents get a chance to sway people to their side! If everyone had to put their personal relationships online then it might increase their accountability seeing as they won't be able to hide their grudges! The moral of the story is that I was able to protect myself without resorting to a fist fight. If anyone else finds themselves in a peevish family then you'll have to join the club! I met my father briefly after I returned to Ireland from a year and a half abroad. We got on well. He showed me the room he bought and I said I'd only be there temporarily while I was getting my bearings. I told him we can meet up for short periods but we wouldn't be spending days together. After such a long time apart I trust him enough to meet in private. Although we can also meet in a public setting where others are around if I'm ever worried about a repeat of bad behaviour. I simply have to be alert around them. I also met my aunt for some tea but I wasn't sure if I could trust her enough for me to stay for dinner! I eventually met up with my mother for tea at a café. She tried to cheat my time quotas by filling our interaction with lots of speedy conversation! We agreed that if she keeps up her good behaviour we might be able to meet more frequently in the future even if we won't be quite as close as we once were. My father actually gave me several driving lessons when I was age 27. My mother and aunt also gave me a few lessons. I never needed a car because everything was so expensive and I was content with trains and buses. Nonetheless learning the basic skills of driving while you're younger can make it easier to pick it up again when you're older. It made me feel confident as a status symbol of adulthood even though I can't afford anything! The overwhelming irony of my religious beliefs is that in being uncertain of meeting my parents in an afterlife I was actually pressured to meet back up with them in real life! The dilemma I had with my parents was that it was really more confusing than a love/hate relationship. It became an extreme love/extreme hate relationship when I balanced their help when I was sick back to the shouting incident. Hence it was the extreme variation within an amoral spectrum that I struggled to comprehend. I gave a long explanation of my disagreement with my parents in this essay. Yet I had also impartially explained to them and advised them in a friendly way so many times before the ultimate shouting incident why I had disagreed with them rather than just warning them in a bitter tone. This is why I perceived them as being so antagonistic when they were truly well-informed on how I didn't want them to misbehave. Before we fell out my father once commented on how my siblings might reconnect with me when I was older in such a way as to imply he didn't care much about me having a friendly relationship with them rather than just a non-aggressive one. Hopefully my later strictness helped them to be nicer to others in their life too rather than to be apathetic. When people overreact to stress in a confrontation then it's hard to tell whether their anger is partly coming from issues in their own personal life rather than at your behaviour. Perhaps they all just tried to stress test my provocation thesis! Sometimes it can be hard to know how much to blame someone when they compounded stress that you were already under. This is made more confusing by how we weren't as self-aware when we were younger and how we might have forgotten some of the mindset we had during previous years. For example I could feel extorted by my parents for harassing me during the leaving cert. Yet I never felt the need to physically defend myself while I was studying for my leaving cert exams. Hence I can't claim that they were responsible for making me try and repeat the leaving cert year. This is in spite of how I technically might have passed it had I started the course my way without wasting another year at it. So if I fret over missed career opportunities I can't blame my parents when I'm meant to adapt to the circumstances instead of taking alternate histories too literally. After all who knows if other life paths might also have entailed accidents and unanticipated mental illnesses. When both my sisters were younger they were often moody towards my parents far more than I was. As such I was taken aback by how my parents didn't seem to always like my personality. However I've to admit I'm not the nicest person and there've been plenty of times where I wasn't grateful enough for my family when I was younger. I don't have access to a jail cell to casually throw people inside in order to make them sincerely repentant! Perhaps we don't know how the people we know get on with lots of others they met in life. As such we might sometimes be better off ignoring them if they become mean instead of taking it upon ourselves to convert an amoral person into a moral person. If they're mean to other people without our knowledge then we've no way of knowing just how intensely cross we'd have to be towards them to get them to change their attitude. The way Ireland can be so individualistic and macho means that you're often forced to forgive parents simply because you won't find more friends in a small town! I've restarted meeting them at mass too for the tea afterwards! Out of all the young people I knew in tennis, hurling and school, my parents were the only people to give me such grief. Although I'd a few cross incidents with teachers too but that's another story! I've been meeting up with my mother for tea in a café more regularly. I also visit my aunt for dinner the odd week but not so frequently as my past weekly visits. My father and I have rekindled a slight tennis companionship again. So luckily we're all on the right road to becoming more tolerant of each other! My elitist take on education will deter anyone else getting angry with their parents! I hope I gave everyone a fair trial! The dilemma with parents that help you more than anyone else in your life is that they're at risk of devaluing the concept of helping others by expressing dislike. So helping someone greatly only to express begrudgement in doing so can indirectly make you feel ungrateful to other people who helped you less than those who helped you greatly. It implies that anyone who helped you can secretly dislike you as if help were a metaphysical perversion. This is why a love/hate relationship can put you at risk of spiritual disorientation where lots of self-awareness is required to sustain the relationship and avoid paranoia. A loving friendship isn't meant to have a capitalist undertone where each act of help is ticking a box in a checklist so to speak! In the same way that love as an emotion isn't quantifiable so too is hatred not fully quantifiable. Hence remorse won't be fully quantifiable either. I'd my 28th birthday party with my parents and other family members where we'd dinner together. I've been gradually increasing my frequency of walks with my father as well. My mam says she has no problem if I ever have to tell her that she's overstepping my boundaries. All is well!

As I already said I accepted his apology and it's fully informed and satisfactory. There's still a tiny tint of ambiguity in just how legalistic the tone is and that I'd also to get him to read this very thread so that he'd know what to reply to. Anyway it's a very trustworthy apology even if it's not quite on a par with St. Paul's change of heart on the road to Damascus.

I go walking in the park with my father since we reconciled but rarely I might walk behind him to meditate if we needed to be less conversational.

If I'm going for a long walk with him a greater distance from town like to the beach in Kilkee I might get a bus there to meet him instead of getting a lift with him:

Sometimes I might ask them for a very short apology but insist they say it on every second meeting:

We ask each other how we're doing the odd time:

Another message from my mother:

My aunt is actually a solicitor so she'd be well able to articulate her apology if she wanted to. It's not that I'm an English teacher who wants precisely structured apologies. The problem is that if she's already being evasive in her three-sentence apology, then what hope is there that she'll be remorseful if another incident were to occur in a few months? In the second sentence she simply parrots back my initial question. Her apology isn't proportionate with the amount of stress she caused me. You have to say it like you mean it. Not speaking to someone doesn't always count as a punishment if they don't miss you very much. Giving out is a double-edged sword because it might have no effect if they ignore you or if you overdo it then they might be too upset. Sometimes I insulted them after our separation as an alternative punishment to lifelong estrangement. Needless to say this can't be justified as a form of defence because you're almost playing God. Cursing can also be subjective in expressing hatred or apathy.

She must've understood that she was bothering me because I told her that directly at the time. She eventually sent me a somewhat more inclusive apology:

I was slightly more isolated for a long time when I first left her where she just sent postcards for Christmases and birthdays. I knew her apologies were tentative when she didn't even mention the way she ignored me since then.

She rang me about the emails and said she had forgotten what she said in the car and that she was sorry. She claimed she didn't know what I wanted her to do during the two years she ignored me even though I'd always made it obvious to her that I wanted her to apologise. Nothing in her argument made sense: she neglected me for so long afterwards because somehow it was more important for me to get accommodation for that one night. I decided to give her a tiny bit of charity. It's possible to not always get on with someone and remain a bit courteous. For instance saying hello doesn't mean I've to have a long chat and meeting up for a long time doesn't mean I've to do it often.

I always thought she was on my side but some people get annoyed very easily. I remember meeting her once where she was getting frustrated to the staff about having her temperature checked for Covid. It was the first time I noticed that she was a bit impatient but I assumed it was just a bad mood. I never thought her short-temper would harden.

My aunt and I have been getting on well in the months after we restarted a distant friendship:

I got a few short sentences resembling an apology from my younger sister:

If people are being a bit indifferent to you then you can be a bit indifferent to them. I briefly met my two sisters over Christmas 2022 at my grandmother's house where we nodded at each other's general direction! Silent presence is better than nothing! I got another text from my younger sister:

I casually bumped into my life coach in town a few times in a polite way when I returned from abroad. I gave her my email in case she needed to contact me. I also met my psychologist in a group meeting with other staff:

I met my father for a few hillwalking sessions in March 2013. On one occassion my father complained about me bringing him to a dirty footpath. I over-reacted in anger to him because I was already so frustrated with others in confrontational threads like gun control. I apologised to him and it goes to show that distraction rather than vengefulness can be a source of anger. Anyway we'd a lovely climb in Kerry later in the week which served as a great act of reconciliation. Another time my aunt and father complained about road directions in a car while heading to a lake, Lough Derg, in east Clare. I got cross with my father because he was unappreciative of the day out being about relaxation. I told him he wasn't allowed be short with others because he has poor self-control if negative emotions escalate. Politeness is essential for those looking for self-control over anger. For example Britain has a violent ancient history but is often perceived as very polite in recognition of how violent they could all be to each other! As such politeness doesn't even need to be sincerely benevolent so long as there's a modicum of self-sacrifice. Some humble people reject frequent greetings of hello on the basis that politeness can be deceptive as a concealment of apathy. This is exaggerated in honour cultures like the antebellum pre-civil war south in America. Yet politeness can be a form of training to prevent provocation in violent crimes. The harsh reality is that someone who mildly scapegoats someone like a bully in school might never be tempted to be murderous in later life by already relieving themselves of rage. Yet another person with no experience of anger might have no self-control in a rare confrontation that descends into violence. As such frequent politeness might be a lesser evil to stop erratic violence!

The day after our walk in Lough Derg I met my mother, father, younger sister and my brother for a dinner in my aunt's holiday home in Crovaghan. My aunt wasn't there but we'd a lovely meal together. It was a good sign that we were closer as friends but not fully reconciled. After dinner my I went for a walk with my father and then he gave me a driving lesson on a quiet contryside lane. I swapped to the passenger seat and on our return journey my father punctured the wheel on a metal object. My father took the metal piece off the road to help other drivers. However he then tried to drive on a flat tyre for an extended period of time. I'm not a mechanic but I thought he was at risk of damaging the wheel. I asked him to pull into a gateway but he kept ignoring me. I grew impatient with him not out of fear of the wheel breaking but because the previous day on our drive to the lake I'd told him that he had to be polite. I was very frustrated with him but I didn't express hatred. He was forced to pull in and I tried to remind him that he's meant to be grateful about being forgiven. However he was baffled and kept justifying his actions. I told him that I was more important than the wheel but he kept dodging my questions. I then told him to keep quiet while I explained to him why I was angry. However my father interrupted me twice mid-sentence with one-worded sorries. I reminded him to keep quiet but he then interrupted me yet again by saying two OK's after the next sentence I spoke. I didn't raise my voice but I spoke slightly faster to express emphasis. My father had an expression of fear despite there being no threat of a physical confrontation. I wasn't insulting him but he was demanding to say a prayer. His fear response made no sense except to portray me as hateful for demanding remorse. He appeared paranoid against me. I left the car and decided to go on a 30 minute walk back to my house. My aunt drove to me but I told her I didn't need a lift but that I was grateful for the offer. I was too stressed after dealing with my father and needed time to myself. Yet she kept turning the car around and stopping to demand I get a lift. She then tried to stay behind me to give me lighting with her headlights as it was night-time. I eventually demanded she drive on because she was offering fake help. At this stage I was deeply saddened by how little they all cared about repeating their harassment of prior incidents. It looked like I'd have to be more distant to them again as a friend. Forgiving them yet again was far more about stopping them becoming aggressive to others than it was the enjoyment of their company. I don't think my father hates me but that he loves to annoy me. I don't think he viewed me as a very nice person. I told him about my desire to help Ukraine but he never seemed very interested in my intentions. He has been temperamental towards me for well over 10 years since my junior cert. Perhaps he just has an extremely entitled mindset rather than a hateful one. The dilemma with my father is that in the past he has viewed remorselessness as a trump card. So he won't retract his apology but he might imply that if he's pressured any more that he might do so. Threatening to take back a past apology is a sign that forgiveness can be a gamble in the same way religious faith is a gamble. I hope this technical and ferociously long account of difficult personal relationships outclasses all the other people wishing to complain in public about random people in their lives! I cut the grass at my grandmother's house occasionally if ever I need to redeem myself!

I gave my father two days to unwind from the incident before ringing him to see if he'd any further insight. I decided to speak very calmly so as not to pressure him into apologising. Sometimes a display of frustration when requesting an apology forgets that a self-initiated apology would show more intentionality. However he spoke with single sentences. First he said he should have changed the tyre immediately after the puncture. I replied very good but what about the incident as it actually happened. He then said he didn't want to pull over on a hill and wanted a flat section. In all honesty the road wasn't too sloped but I didn't mention it. I asked him to comment specifically on our conversation in the car. He bluntly replied that he should have listened to me. Eventually I asked him to relate this to all the previous incidents and replied with a general sorry. I told him I could tell that he wasn't very good but that my stage in life was a bit of an emergency with foreign travel where I'd have to tolerate him.

Forgiveness might seem like an achievable quality when others can forgive extreme violence and even murder and war crimes. Yet apathy to violence might be a bigger challenge than violence itself when it comes to forgiveness in Christianity. The harsh reality is that psychopathy could undermine Christianity be pretending to be remorseful and then to hate people who are forgiving. Psychopathy might be a complex mental disorder but in casual terms simply means a lack of empathy combined with violence. Maybe Christianity only looks like a militant religion because America is half-Christian. America can be a paradoxical form of Christianity from a center-left perspective in their promotion of wealth and individuality. America could look hysterically Christian if they were viewed as really forgiving to wealthy people and international former dictators. Yet there's another side to America where they actively glorify selfish people and war criminals instead of really forgiving them. There's a mystery to whether Americans prefer the ideals of America over the ideals of Christianity. If America confessed that they all viewed Christianity as an aside then the faith would be severely damaged by having no other country with a devout track record. Maybe so many European Christians can get away with being lapsed solely because America serves as a superpower defender of Christianity. Yet if America became fully non-Christian in the future then Christian countries would be millions of times weaker than America's military. Thus Christianity would be viewed as a limited faith in the material world were it not for America. The power of forgiveness is deeply dependent on Christian countries being collectively perceived as strong in the international climate. If Christianity fails as a religion then forgiveness might be perceived as a weak virtue in the west. Apologies for the galactic comparison from parents to American foreign affairs. The benefit of lesser evils is that no one ever has to view themself as worse than others pursuing even bigger lesser evils(!):

"The new memoir from former child star Jennette McCurdy has an attention-grabbing title: I’m Glad My Mom Died... Over the course of the book, McCurdy, who built her name on Nickelodeon’s iCarly and Sam and Cat, more than makes her case, detailing years of her mother’s mental and physical abuse."

https://www.vox.com/culture/23306836/jennette-mccurdy-book-im-glad-my-mom-died-memoir-child-acting-star-icarly-sam-and-cat

I finally got sweet revenge against my mother(!):

Yet more jokes:

Be wary of those who snap and change their temperament rather easily(!):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ7wB4rm5Hw

Evil mode Galadriel - The Lord of the Rings

"If I died and it was it was Pluto or Hades and if it was the twelve Greek gods then I would have more truck with it because the Greeks didn't pretend not to be human in their appetites and in their capriciousness and in their unreasonableness. They didn't present themselves as being all seeing, all wise, all kind or beneficent because the God who created this universe if it was created by God is quite clearly a maniac. Utter maniac; totally selfish! We have to spend our life on our knees thanking you? What kind of God would do that? Yes the world is very splendid but

it also has in it insects whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes. Why did you do that to us?

You could easily have made a creation in which that didn't exist. It is simply not acceptable."

(Stephen Fry on the Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne RTE)

Perhaps we need capricious judges in the colosseum who stick their thumb up for a suspended sentence and down for life sentence without wasting time on objectivity!

Erased post (almost):

Stress can compromise our decision making skills but we still have to control ourselves as inflicting pain on others won't make the stress go away.

You can never know when these debate websites might crash!

It's unfortunate that no warning was given before the site was removed.