I've just got issues (I'm sure this is part one of many)

The title of this blog was created a long time ago during a conversation. I got done telling a friend a story and as if to make it seem as if I understood what I said, I closed with "I just have issues."

We laughed. I wrote down the title and waited until some morning where I could explore that whole idea. And that's today.

Well, I guess the hot topic amongst my friends is my fighting issues.

"We're just worried about you."

How sweet. Well fucking worry about something else. I'll worry about me.

Fighting, hey, its for something.

But then again, going back in time, I remember my childhood. Fighting and lots of it.

Being bi-polar fighting comes naturally, as the chemicals needed to fight are always "that was the wrong thing to say" away.

My personal problem is people who threaten me. I must say if you're going to make a threat, you fucking better be prepared for my reaction. You may not have much time to react either.

Physically threatening me is a whole other matter. I'm unfortunately not afraid to mix it up with someone twice my size. The chemical burst which occurs when I feel physically threatened is nothing you can buy on the streets, well maybe, PCP.

I've been beaten up two years in a row, each in December, the first an assailant and next the pseudoboyfriend mistake.

My assailant who was battling someone who has been in many battles, (but I happened to have been healthy back then), actually, weirdly, after he gave up the attempted rape/assault and the fun of trying to subdue me for five hours, complimented me: "You're stronger than you look."

Yeah fuckhead I'm bi-polar. Whatever drugs you were taking, the ones I make in my own body are unadulterated and of a higher quality.

Had I been a normal weight, all muscle, this piss ant wouldn't have been complimenting me, he would have been in the hospital.

My fighting career started early. Not that I looked for fights but fights always found me.

For the most part kid fights are one thing, except when you have older kids bullying the younger ones. I was a bully buster though and took on some big kids who thought they were pretty tough.

Nothing like being a teenage boy beaten up by a rabid seven year old girl. I'm sure they're still in therapy over it.

I remember telling my parents I would be taking Karate, not piano. I remember reading their faces before the ultimate answer of, "hell no."
They were thinking, training this force? No thanks.

However, I trained myself. I was athletic in every way, and BP chemically, truly even as a young child, mine started early. I worked on fighting moves all the time, and applied them to real life.

When my parents divorced, my Dad who never said a real cross word to me as a child, left the household, my Mother pushed him out. Then she marries my stepfather who woo's my sister and I.

I then discover all there is to know about alcoholism and the blackouts, as my stepfather, had them regularly.

We couldn't have been more a miserable mess than this family mixture, and I remember it well, my stepdad coming home from work, just getting in the door, suit and tie, and he began talking really mean to my mother.

I never heard my Dad talk like that, and something triggered.

"Shut up," I told him.

He just smiled. Then I jumped on him and grabbed his tie and let my body weight pull it tight around his neck. His face turned red and he gagged. He punched me right in the face and sent me flying across the room into the door, where I slid down and looked at the blood trickling from my face onto my shirt.

I knew not to move. My mother and my sister were screaming, and he came over to look at me. As soon as he was crouched down in a vulnerable position, I struck. I kicked him right in the balls.

The fight didn't last long as my Mother's screams got the neighbors attention.

But this would be the first fight which lasted for years until I almost killed him one night. Then he almost killed me too.

I would always try to find a way to come into my house of booze unnoticed, because there would always, and I mean always, be a problem which lead to a fight.

It's not been necessarily a want to fight situation, sometimes it happens. I crept up back stairways, climbed the garage and went into a window, used many windows in fact. I didn't want to fight, I wanted to be left alone.

So, why this sudden physical violence in my life, now so many years later? I don't know completely, but I have a few ideas.

Then I piss off Mr. Martial Arts, pseudoboyfriend, with my usual flair. But that day I had a migraine was throwing up and could not deal with his problems.

So, I said and did some things which pissed him off to the point he punched me fast, cold cocked me to the face, and dropped me like a rock to the floor. Both my hands were full, so it was a total domination, chicken shit, move.

Then he lost all control, when I was down, he put his knee in my back and started to repeatedly punch me in the head. I acknowledged I was down and turned my head to the already broken and numb side and waited for him to get down hitting me.

I passed out for a minute. I imagine he expected to have more time time to pack and leave.

I opened my eyes, realized what had happened and got up to my feet. Now there was nothing in my hands mutherfucker.

He was leaning down packing his clothes as quickly as possible, he didn't realize I had gotten up and was standing right behind, with knives within reach.

But he was a sorry lot, no control of his rage, trained in fighting, stabbing and some other gang related things, and I wasn't going to kill him or even hurt him. He needed to leave immediately and never come back.

He turned and saw me standing over him, and startled at the unexpected sight, growled, "I'm going to kill you."

I said flatly, no inflection, "better people have tried."

He took a swing at me, which I reacted to and fell down. He ran out the door, "bye pussy, chickenshit, run."

I didn't file charges against him, as I felt sorry for him: he wasn't strong, he was weak and that made him dangerous.

His father was cop who blew his head off in front of the family, so I figured he had had enough. He knew better than to come back. At the hospital where they treated my migraine and my completely shut eye, they said, "you better lock your doors tonight, he could come back."

I said, "I'm leaving them unlocked in fact, and its up to him if he would like to do that again."

That's when I realized: Beaten up, but never beaten down.

So, violence reared its ugly head in my life, somehow I got through it. But I still have the feelings that if you want to threaten me then you are really playing with fire.

Usually, I believe in an eye for an eye, balancing out the scale. You punch me, I punch you. Not, you punch me and I drive my car through your rented apartment.

So, yes, I just have issues...