What You Can Gain from Abuse
The experience can make you super, or destroy you.
Child abuse makes it a lot easier to fire people. Even if they’re in the hospital. Being a heartless bitch when called for, it’s one of the many superpowers I gained as a survivor.
One spring, an instructor I supervised got into a bad car accident. When I took over her class, that’s when I found out she hadn’t been doing her job. Her students didn’t even have a syllabus.
After ten weeks, she hadn’t graded a single assignment.
The students were pissed. This was a creative writing class, dammit, and they wanted to know if they had futures.
Later that week, I was obliged to pay the instructor a visit. So I handed her some gift shop flowers and said, “I met with your students yesterday.”
Her face went white. “Oh,” she said. “How did it go?”
“Not well.” I sighed. “Listen, do you have a grade book or anything? It’ just that none of them have any work.”
The instructor slowly shook her head. For a few seconds, she stammered. A normal person might’ve felt bad for her. But those neurons were burned out of my brain long ago.
Still, I’ve learned how to be civil. So I shrugged and said I’d handle it. On my way out, she…
