EMOTIONAL PUNCHBAG

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

He was supposed to be somebody by now. 

He was supposed to be rich, famous, successful…

But he hadn’t lived up to his full potential.

Instead, he hauled goods across the country, which is not to say that truck driving is below anybody, but he hated his job. It robbed and drained him of spirit. It made him pessimistic, frustrated, angry, so when he did get home from long shifts, he would take it all out on the bag.

His punchbag was a way to release the stress, tension and steam. He was mean with his shots. He threw the fire of anger with his cross…

And jabbed with the rock like weight of his frustration.

When he was done, he would crack open a six pack and numb himself into the wee hours of the morning. With his sweat still cooling, like the droplets of water running down his cold can of beer, his conscience would clear as the alcohol poisoned his body. As his toxicity level rose the voice of his SOUL was incomprehensible, which numbed his mind from the problems of his reality; exactly what he wanted to do.

At 2am, dazed and groggy, he made his way to bed in a sorry state. The rock like weight of his frustration was heavy again, and the fire of his anger was burning bright, so after a restless night’s sleep, he was ready to hit his punchbag once more.

That morning, after throwing some reckless shots, his energy was spent. He wasn’t happy, but he was empty. He was still mad, which was really internal sadness disguised as aggression, but for now his emotion had been absorbed as a violent flurry of punches and kicks into the tired skin of his punchbag. He had transmuted the negative energy and felt better…

So he left the house to be a truck driver.

That evening, when his shift was over, management called him into the office to tell him the haulage company he worked for was going bust. He had lost his job in a moments movement of a man’s lips. He could feel his fingertips clenching, knowing full well that he would have to control his anger because he couldn’t react aggressively here. He feared losing his severance pay, so he made his way home with the tainted emotion, the toxic venom bottled up in his body.

There stood his trusty ol’ punchbag when he walked through the front door. His SOUL was no longer trapped in a job that he hated, but he felt betrayed and so he knew where the heat was going to go; his trusty ol’ punchbag was about to feel his burning wrath. His eyes were black with rings of scorched hate, which went straight into the shots that he threw. Round after round of one two was enough to make him feel like a big man again. The punchbag was swinging, barely standing, which didn’t stop him from smacking it once more.

With a final blow, his beloved punchbag fell to the floor as froth curdled in the corner of his mouth. He had never hit and hurled abuse like that before. He had never knocked his punchbag to the floor with such emotional ferocity. With nothing left in it, no wind left to hit he grabbed his trucker hat and slammed the door as he left the house to drink at his local bar.

The next day, he woke up in his car, far away from home. He smelt like bourbon and strippers’ perfume after spending what little money he had left on a good time and pleasure. The good man in him never thought it would come to this; he was filled to the brim with unfulfilled potential and bitterness.

Eventually, he staggered out of the car to piss at the side of the road but as he was doing so, a cop car sounded its siren and hastily pulled over. In another toxic twist of fate, he was arrested for public indecency and spent the night in a cell, with a hangover from hell.

Once he got out of jail, he made his way home with a level of anger and frustration that was scary. At this point, the spite he was spitting was of such intensity, it could have killed somebody. Luckily, his punchbag had finally hit rock bottom, already broken down on the floor, unable to take any more…

Because when he walked through the door SHE was gone.

When a man emotionally abuses someone for that long it is inevitable. At this point, the emotional damage he had caused was irreversible and his punchbag…

Aka his WIFE had left him.

He never actually laid a finger on her physically, but in this story, the punchbag acts as an emotional metaphor. He and his wife had been together for years but there were only so many shots of emotional abuse she could take. He lost the love of his life, but let his cowardly mistake be a lesson from two points of view:

If a man fires the shots, the jabs and crosses of emotional abuse at somebody for long enough, then they will eventually leave him. 

Alternatively…

If a man receives the shots, the jabs and crosses of emotional abuse from somebody for long enough, then it is time to leave them.

Let this be a sign.

It is not fine to use somebody as a punchbag for negative emotions and at the same time, it is not fine to be used as one either. No matter how broken a man’s spirit might be, nobody has the right to use or should be used by another as a venting point for negative energy.

Nobody…

Deserves to be an EMOTIONAL PUNCHBAG!

White Bear