I am logical and rational because one needs a knowledge of that in order to reverse it.
I have spent most of my life toe to toe
With people who do not live on that plane.
I've had to learn it so that I can learn to fight in worlds of others' creations,
Where neither facts nor emotions have any substance,
Where the only way to stay alive is to convince your opponent that they thought of your solution themselves.

People wonder why I think defensively.
It is because I have been forced to my knees by people so cunning they fool themselves,
So incredibly sure of their goodness
That they could slap you and make you apologize for hurting their hand.
And you'd believe it: you'd cry real tears.
You'd punish yourself for them.

I was raised by people like this.

I was molded to apologize when hurt.
And it has left me... Bitterly unprepared for the world.
But it has left me with an eye for mazes of the mind:
One needs to tread upon the ground of insanity to hope to hold one's own against gods-
For that is what people like this are in their lives: gods.
They make the rules.
And if you don't say yes to them you will never reach your goal.
For these people,
There is no possibility of "wrong",
There is no way to convince them to see a different perspective,
There is no flexibility whatsoever.
As illusions go, their worlds are rigid ones-
Rigid because one discrepancy could send everything tumbling
Like a failed house of cards.

And so if ever you need something from one of these people...
First of all, I pity you.
Second of all, you must navigate their fun house mirror maze full of trip wires.
You must simply survive their attacks.
The goal has to be to live to fight another day.
It has to be to shout truth over and over into the wind and weather the punishment for having thought it,
So that you may return another time and shout again.
The goal has to be to be so loud that they might remember your words.
Not today, not tomorrow, but maybe someday, if you scream and rave and
Fight hard enough,
Maybe one important, true sentence will break through and reach them.
And maybe they will allow it to exist.
Allow you to exist.
That can really be your only goal
With people like this.