Close Enough to Be In Them

We were waiting for coffee. The line wasn't moving fast enough for the guy behind me, apparently. Close enough to feel him breathing down my neck.

I stepped forward when the line moved, gave the space back, and he closed it again.

Second time, same thing, but I stepped to the side so he could see I was giving the person ahead some room. Not a crowding problem, a him problem.

Third time I stepped forward again. Fourth time he closed the gap, I turned around and got nose to nose.

You like my clothes? Yeah? You're close enough to be in them. Only people I let get that close are either fucking me or feeding me. You're doing neither.

He looked confused, said yeah, actually. A delay in registering what was happening.

He puffed his chest, stood up straight, as if.

I leaned in and said something else. Quiet enough that nobody around us heard it.

He did not want to go outside.

The Count

I always gave chances, usually three. That's not restraint, it's process. And by the time I turned around it felt entirely reasonable.

Methodical, even.

What I didn't understand for a long time was that the count didn't start in the coffee line. That shape had a very specific history.

The read was never wrong. He was too close, he knew it, and he kept doing it anyway. Not rudeness in general, but the knowing and the not stopping...

That begged my attention, and back then, I always obliged.

What My Friends Saw

There was a movie theater once. A guy with a nervous tic, kicking my seat. He'd stop when I looked back, start again when I turned around. Fourth time, I stood up in the dark, turned and told him...

Kick my seat one more fucking time and watch what the fuck happens.

At a minimum my friends were embarrassed. Mostly they were rightly concerned, they'd seen things escalate fast before. Looking back, it was indeed challenging to be around me at times.

Nobody called a meeting about it, as far as I know. They just learned the tells and knew what was coming before the other person had any idea.

What I felt was completely justified. When they stepped in, I didn't say anything, but I felt the indignance. Who are you to moderate me. I handle my own business.

That indignance was just the system protecting itself from outside perspective.

What It Actually Was

I thought I was righting wrongs.

The guy in the coffee line was being rude. The guy in the theater knew what he was doing.

It was never a misread.

Exactly what made it impossible to question for so long.

The culture gave it a home. Some people fight on the internet. Gen X threw hands in the real world, like it's just a Tuesday.

I came up in East Oakland in the late 70s. Think New York in the same era, minus the news coverage. If you didn't throw hands early enough or hard enough? You'd be out quick and wake up without shoes and clothes, or worse. Gladiator games, in the hood.

Don't be soft, hold the line. That wasn't culture as performance, it was the actual cost of getting it wrong.

That framing kept the whole thing intact and unexamined for a long time.

The Actual Source

The nervous system isn't reacting to a coffee line.

It's a response to every powerlessness moment when someone knowingly caused harm and kept doing it simply because they could. That says I see you and I don't care. Either absorb it or escalate, as a child, escalating cost more than you could afford. Eventually you're not a child anymore, and that changes the calculation.

The whisper in the coffee line wasn't a performance. It delivered information privately and precisely to the one person it concerned...

Wanna go outside? Just know you're going to have to kill me.

What I was carrying wasn't justice, it was fear in different clothes. Anger at having had to be afraid. Rage at the requirement to be useful, to stay competent, and relentless. Forced to read every room before entering just to maintain some tiny little margin of safety.

The guy in the coffee line wasn't the one who made fear necessary.

From a coffee line to you're going to have to kill me is pretty insane. It's what abuse in and out of the home does to a person from a young enough age. It doesn't just leave damage, it can lead you right to hopping that bus to crazytown.

I'm not saying it was justified, environmental, the product of childhood violence, and therefore fine.

I'm saying your read on proportion breaks, and you don't find out how badly until years later. And only after enough unpacking and reflection. If at all, some people never get there.

The Long Way Back

That was my mid-twenties. I'm in my mid-fifties now, and it's pretty rare for anybody to get a rise out of me these days. Thirties before I started truly examining it. Forties before I'd actually dialed it back. Not by force, but through understanding.

It wasn't control or self-mastery, it was a different lens entirely. Everyone is doing their best with the level of awareness, mindset, and tools of the moment. Expecting a different outcome is like asking an asthmatic to just breathe normally. It's not gonna happen and it's not an excuse. Just a fact about how people work, the same fact that was true about me in that coffee line.

When I watch someone react the way I did, it feels more like recognition. Knowing the exact cost of that reactivity and living in it. Just somebody who hasn't gotten enough distance and clarity yet.

What's Left

The friends who stepped in without making it too much of a thing. Seems they were watching the count and doing the math faster than I was.

I can tell the difference now, most of the time. The genuine response from the borrowed one. The values didn't disappear.

Disrespect is still real, fairness still matters.

What I do with the gap between someone's behavior and my read of it? These days I mostly just feel for them. I know what it's like on the other side of that distance.

I spent a long time without it.

Connective Tissue:

→ Fieldcraft for the Feral Generation
→ What the Nervous System Never Forgot
→ Before There Were Practices

Related:

→ What Regulation Made Possible
→ Trauma-Illness Connection
→ The Accent of Self‑Blame

Also:

→ Getting Off the Bullseye
→ Layer One: Start Where You Are
→ Sleeping On Childhood Cortisol

← Back to Inner Trailcraft

* peer reflections: not medical or therapy advice. *