It Was Never About the Bank
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Last week I told you about a phone call with USAA. About the first time I felt something go quiet and cold in me. If you missed it, welcome anyway. You don't need last week's letter to be here for this one. After I sent it, someone who read it asked me a question. I hadn't thought to ask it myself. What did he think was going to happen? Did he think a stranger on the phone would just cave because he got loud? No policy was going to change because a man yelled. No manager was going to hand my money over faster. There was no outcome on the other end of that anger. Nothing to win. I sat with that question for days. I had always told myself his anger was strategic. Misguided, maybe. Over the top. But aimed at something. A means to an end. There wasn't one. Once I stopped looking for the goal, I saw it clearly. The anger wasn't a means to anything. It was the thing itself. He needed to feel powerful. Yelling at a stranger was how he got there. My money. My bank. My Saturday afternoon. None of it was really the subject. It was just the nearest surface for something in him to push against. That call was one of the last times he made the call himself. There's more to that sentence than I'm ready to tell you today. For now I'll just leave it there. This is the part that took me the longest to understand. It wasn't a strategy I failed to see coming. It was a need with no destination. And a need like that doesn't stop when you meet it. It just finds the next surface. I wish I'd seen that back then. I didn't. I filed it under bad day. Under stress. Under he doesn't mean it. I kept looking for the plan behind the behavior, because a plan would have made sense to me. A need that just wants to be fed doesn't make sense. It isn't supposed to. If you're sitting with something like this, a person whose reactions never seem to have a point, I want you to know something. That's not a puzzle you're failing to solve. Some behavior doesn't have an answer at the bottom of it. Sometimes the behavior is the answer. Jaycee has never once needed me to explain myself to her. She just wants to know I'm home. That's the whole ask. I'm grateful every day for how simple that is. If you're new here and want to read the earlier letters, you can find the full archive at janeandjaycee.kit.com. Until next Sunday, |
The Jane & Jaycee Project
A weekly letter for woman starting over.
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