Socks in the Kitchen

Loving & Fighting

Jun 17, 2025

My mother taught me how to fight, and my father taught me what love is.

“You do not hit your mother!” she exclaimed.

I’m about 6-8 years old and I don’t have my words yet, just raw emotion. I don’t have my words but I do have the rage I feel being trapped in a tiny body with an awareness that no one sees or cares about and screams

“Bitch. YOU don’t hit your child!”

Even though that wasn’t spoken, perhaps it was communicated in some way when a kid who barely talks and hides in her room has to resort to physical retaliation. It might only be a whisper, but something in the back of your mind would have to think ‘Oh. Maybe I’M the problem.’

The Irish Catholics can be a bit like the Mafia. Only they are allowed to hurt their own. Anyone outside of the tribe who inflicts harm or injustice is opposed, and so whatever ferocity was inside the home was also used against school administration and any adult who wanted to pick a fight with us (which was only ever my siblings, as like I said, I didn’t speak).

My mother taught me how to stand up for myself and how to advocate for others.

Fast forward many years later in my kitchen with my dad.

A glass drops on the floor and shatters.

No big deal, this is a thing that happens. I mosey on over to start collecting broken pieces.

“WAIT.” My dad insists.

He was a pretty hands-off, passive father who never raised his voice at me. In fact, he was distinctly carefree the entire time I had known him, except for this moment apparently. The sudden change came as a surprise.

“This is very dangerous.” he says to me.

He took the time to make me aware that even though it looked safe to pick up the glass, it wasn’t. He insisted on picking up all the pieces with only the broom, and that I wear socks in the kitchen. This is the only time I witnessed him insistent on anything, when it had to do with safety.

There’s something I don’t talk about often because the reality of it is so heavy and demoralizing once you fully wrap your head around it. It’s that most of humanity calls a lot of things love that are not love. We are so deeply, profoundly lost.

I know there are exceptions to all rules, but I really do feel this is the rule, which is that humans are so lost that they look at things like abuse, possession, and pretty much most of what happens in a traditional relationship, and call it love.

It’s hard to fully explain, but my dad subtly taught me the function of detachment in love. I think when people hear this, they think that detachment means being against commitment, and being an uncaring, ambivalent partner. It’s anything but this.

Love is when there are a thousand shards of glass and you go out of your way to make sure the other person is aware of how dangerous it is, of the ways they could get hurt. Instead, everyone is very busy being the shards of glass to one another. Love is when you value a person for what they are, not what they do for you personally.

The human race seeks to control one another, and calls that love. You want to hit someone when they’re not doing what you want them to do. Even in nonviolent relationships, you must satisfy a checklist of conditions to be deemed worthy of that person.

“I want a partner that makes ME feel like this and does this thing for ME and gets ME this stuff.” No one will admit it, but it’s true. In this paradigm, it is not enough to simply share a meal with someone, to share burdens and work on becoming better people together. I must also look a certain way, dress a certain way, act a certain way, get them off a certain way, or make a certain amount of money. It’s very hard to communicate to people, most of whom are taught that this paradigm is normal, that this is not loving a person. It’s controlling them in such a way that satisfies your own ego. We have all commodified one another on the marketplace planet. It’s so ingrained to think of love in this way that we are not even aware of it.

Love is seeing a person and wanting to share life with them. Love is hard because it’s simple, and we are not.

It is a bit odd for me to look on at all the stories people share about the abuse they endured from their parents. I think to myself that there eventually comes a time when you have to stand up for yourself. There isn’t a cell in my body that willingly goes into victim mode, that would take abuse from another person no matter who it’s from. Perhaps that is why I wasn’t born into a severely abusive family, as I would have died fighting for my life, and would do so today.

Look at how many of us put up with discord in the home from relatives and significant others. It doesn’t need to be domestic- look at how many of us allow harassment and verbal abuse from these people who “love” us?

I wish we’d make something perfectly clear- that people who physically hurt you, only want you in the way they see fit, who neglect you, are not loving. Period.

Watch how fast things change with this clear boundary and understanding.

I wish they would.

In the meantime, I’m wearing socks in the kitchen.