The man who suddenly flew into a rage on 19 December 2024, grabbed me and threw me onto the floor was far more violent than the man who raped me all those decades ago.

The latter had compassion, too. If you want to know more about that, I wrote something about this in a recent booklet about how I learned to negotiate and I am watching a film that reminded me of this. It all happened so long ago and has so little significance now that I don’t even remember when exactly it was.

The former did not. At least, he did not express any compassion. I think he kept it all to himself.

I ended up with bruises on both my arms and my tail bone occasionally still squeaks. It hurt for days back then, weeks.

He seemed to blame me for the fact that he flew into such a crazy rage. That is because I confronted him with an uncomfortable reality.

It was not as if I was not already nervous around him. That this guy was being tormented by issues, inner demons or whatever was crystal-clear.

And some nonsense he had told me was so crazy that it actually scared me. I found it very unsettling.

That is why I pushed and that is why I did it in front of others. I felt unsafe around this guy. I had the impression that nobody else knew how unstable – for lack of a better word – he had become. Someone had mentioned that he had trouble concentrating, perhaps without realizing that, because he called him easily distracted or whatever.

(No, it does not compare to what has/d been going on in my life. In this case, the physical evidence that proved that what he said was a crazy concoction was right there in front of him, whereas in my case, the physical evidence that proved that what I said was accurate was right there, too.)

I was not surprised that he suddenly blew up. I was shocked by how matter-of-fact he pretended that nothing had happened.

I had already been quite taken aback by how easily he was twisting truths. It seemed so callous, so heartless, so opportunistic, for lack of a better word.

But he’s definitely tormented by powerlessness and I feel sorry for him.