Still the Same

He spent decades behaving badly. Very badly.

He did not know he was afraid. He didn't know his bad behavior was his maladjusted way of responding to being unable to deal appropriately with the way the world dealt with him.

Not that it mattered. Millions of people don't behave badly just because they are afraid. They don't react badly to the way the world treats them. They just deal with it.

But he did not. He did not deal with it. At least he did not deal with it well. The way he reacted to the world's rawness was to claw and scratch and shout. And demean. And condemn. And hurt people He was good at hurting people. If you can call that good. His response to pain was to cause pain, but to amplify it and make it grow into a powerful beast,

In the right novel, someone like him would have been a tragic character. He would have been pitied. His belligerence would have been portrayed as a cry for help. But in the real world, he got what he got. Shunned. Loathed. Avoided.

I wonder where he is today, and whether he's still the same old guy.