How to Tell if You're the One Being an Asshole

I should have realized that a reckoning was coming. Was here, actually.

This Reckoning was so accustomed to showing up, in fact, that by now it was fairly casual and would just bring reading materials with it so that it could sit on the couch and wait for me to catch up. Which I haven't, because fuck the Reckoning, you know? It had no idea- no idea- what it's like to be me; the pain, the fog, the unsureness and the aging teeth, not to mention everything I had done for the Reckoning that one time. Plus, this is how we did it when I was growing up. How did the Reckoning argue with it's parents when it was just a Firm Thought and still lived under the Roof of Righteousness with it's parents, Bill and Halle? I bet they were all forthright with each other. I can picture them getting angry and then standing around in their sunken shag-carpeted living room, telling uncomfortable truths to each other in respectful turns. That is not how we did it.

In our house, there was one person (Dad) who would be the one who eventually shouted us all down. That wasn't hard, because we weren't shouters by nature. So if one of us (Dad) became angry and we would not acquiesce, the shouting would stop things. There was a sense that the reciprocal shouting just wasn't worth the trouble: there would be hurtful feelings (Me) and perhaps things spit through clenched teeth (Mom) and something else that I didn't notice (Sister.) So that's how I play it, and I love it that way, and now here comes Ol' Reckoning in it's jeans and the smugness all it's stocking feet up on the coffee table. Reel it out like I do, friend, or there will be absolutely no communication betwixt us. Because you have no idea how hard it is, how much I toil, or the trouble I've seen-

Oh shit.

How to Tell if You're the One Being the Asshole:

1) You start informing someone about your hardship or circumstances or old grievances in list form. Any time you're in an argument and you feel the need to enlighten your anger-receptacle about things they certainly already know, you're the Asshole.

2) Using words like "Always" or "Never" How often do you hear yourself saying "You always decide it's a great idea to drag race in the alley behind our house at one in the morning. The fact that I'm performing incredibly delicate and harrowing neurosurgery at six in the morning never even crosses your mind, And don't you dare use my last pair of fresh fishnet stockings out there, because you never rinse them out!" You used those words, and even though you are in the right because the same thing happens every Easter and you're sick of the shameful visits to the ER to get glass picked out of your loved one's grimy tranny knee...you're the Asshole.

3) You stop listening to your loved one's ranting to roll your eyes/leave the room to get more whiskey/make a phone call. You do this in spite of, or because, it makes the loved one shut up. They know- oh, they know- they've been made to zip it, and they will begin the fuming and resentment and plots to hire the very next assassin they meet to kill you in a way that almost makes it look like an accident. Almost. So stop yourself the next time you feel the urge to roll/leave/make a phone call, or you may be the victim of a horrible and suspicious kitchen accident involving the food disposal - and all because you were the Asshole.

4)You shut up because of some ill-informed thing your loved one did during your brilliant oratory on why you are the one who understands and should be obeyed. The second you do that, the very second, is when you begin the plotting {see item #3.} And also you shouldn't start thinking about who you're going to go out and kiss once you and your impending ex-partner break up already. It feels great because you get to be as vindicated and king-or-queenly as you want in this fantasy, and you do it so you can get to the best part. That's where your ex comes back and admits to the current wrong and all the past wrongs and all the made-up wrongs and lies prostrate at your feet, begging for either your forgiveness or your signing of the papers for their execution. Guess what? You're the Asshole.

5) Your loved one tells you you're an Asshole.


Reckoning is nodding at me now, and that smug puss has just gotten smugger. It makes me want to do something awful to it, like spill some coffee on it's white button-down, but for right now I won't. I think we both know why.