I just hung up on a relative.
I won’t listen to you if you don’t listen to me.
I’ve played that game before.
I know how it ends. I’m not playing it again.
People assume I have different policies depending on the person or situation. I don’t. My hang-up policy is universal.
It just so happens that my relatives are extreme, so sometimes, I have to be extreme in kind.
Why?
Because trying to explain things to people who cannot hear you is a waste of life.
It’s a losing strategy. And I refuse to participate in insanity.
It is insane to listen to someone in good faith when they refuse to do the same for you. Yet, I see it happening all the time.
People tolerate insanity just because it wears a familiar face.
Nobody knows what “normal” is.
There’s no universal score, no standard measure of sanity. But some people believe crazy shit.
Some people look normal, act normal, blend into society… yet are as deranged as they come.
And they roam freely.
They drive next to you on the highway.
They vote.
They hold positions of power.
And they have no idea how crazy they are.
I wrote a whole chapter in my memoir about one such person. I figured out in a few hours that he was a dangerous sociopath.
Yet when I tried to warn others, they made me out to be overreacting.
By the end of that chapter?
Not only was I right—I was more right than I could have ever imagined.
We miss these people because we project our own ethics onto them.
We assume they think like we do.
We assume they have morals.
We assume they have the capacity for self-awareness.
That’s why I went through several relationships with a completely false idea of who my partners were.
It wasn’t until I healed my trauma that I could see the crazy in others for what it was.
And when I looked back at certain relationships, I realized something bone-chilling:
There were people in my life who had never treated me with respect.
Not once.
Not at the beginning.
Not in the middle.
Not at the end.
And yet, I had kept them around.
Never again.
One of the greatest lessons life has taught me is this:
People don’t change.
Not in any fundamental way.
If someone has been the same way their whole life, what makes you think they’ll suddenly wake up one day and become better?
They won’t.
They will stay true to their nature—no matter how much you hope otherwise.
That’s why I believe them forever when someone shows me who they were once.
Saddam Hussein was well-dressed.
He was eloquent.
He was accepted in high society.
And he was a monster.
The truly sinister people in this world are not the ones that stand out.
They are the ones you would never suspect.
Some people are so evil…
You can’t even imagine how evil they are.
And that’s precisely why they get away with it.
Because the average person can’t comprehend that level of depravity.
P. Diddy is another excellent example. Expensive suits, expensive cologne… but behind closed doors? Worse than the devil.
OJ Simpson? The ultimate Jekyll & Hyde.
A lot of doctors are entirely out of their minds.
Think about a plastic surgeon who can peel a face-off—flesh, bone, the works.
What mindset do you need for that? I don’t know what’s wrong there… but something’s off.
Two people can have the same relationship but live in entirely different realities.
One person believes in love, loyalty, and trust.
The other person believes in control, manipulation, and ownership.
One person thinks you’re in this together.
The other thinks you belong to them.
And that’s a crazy relationship.
Yet those relationships last decades.
Not because they should.
Not because they work.
But because one person refuses to see the truth.
I used to be incredibly naive.
Extremely gullible.
Extremely easy to manipulate.
Naturally, that made me a target for a specific type of person.
But those days are over.
I have 25 years of deliberate growth behind me.
I have developed very discerning eyes.
People don’t fool me anymore.
These days, I see people for exactly what they are—and they don’t even realize it.
And so I delight in the moments when people tell on themselves.
When they slip.
When they expose themselves.
When they show their hand too soon.
And in those moments, I make my move.
That’s when I hung up.
That’s when I walk away.
Because some people?
They were never going to hear me in the first place.
I say all this to say that when a person presents me with crazy behavior, sometimes crazy requires a forceful response. Sometimes, that response is to step back.
And sometimes, that response is to hang up the phone.
I used to think I had to tolerate certain people, that I had to be the bigger person, and that I had to keep the peace.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Not because I’ve become bitter. Not because I’ve become jaded. But because I’ve seen firsthand what happens when you give people infinite chances.
They don’t get better. They get worse.
They learn that there are no consequences for treating you like garbage.
And before you know it, you’ve become the emotional punching bag for people without the intention of ever-changing.
That’s not a life. That’s a prison.
And I refuse to serve another day of that sentence.
I used to believe in patience.
I used to believe that if I explained myself enough, stayed calm, and waited long enough… people would see reason.
That was a mistake.
Because the truth is, some people are committed to not understanding you.
It’s not that they can’t hear you. It’s that they won’t.
They don’t want to.
If they had acknowledged your point of view, they would have had to question their own.
And some people would rather die than do that.
They would rather lose relationships, burn bridges, and ruin their lives before they would ever admit they were wrong.
And you know what?
That’s not my problem.
I used to take it personally when people didn’t hear me.
I used to think I wasn’t explaining myself well enough.
Now I understand:
Some people are just brick walls with ears.
They were never going to hear me.
They were never going to understand.
They were never going to change.
And when you finally accept that about a person?
It frees you.
Because you stop trying to reach them.
You stop banging your head against the wall.
You stop wasting your breath.
You stop.
And you hang up the phone.
Some people think that’s cruel.
Some people think that’s extreme.
But what I’ve learned is this:
People who think boundaries are cruel are the same people who benefited from you not having any.
They want you to stay on the phone.
They want you to keep explaining.
They want you to keep engaging.
Not because they respect you.
Not because they want to meet you halfway.
But because they feed off of your energy.
And the longer they can keep you on the line, the longer they can waste your time, frustrate you, and make you doubt yourself.
It’s a game.
And I no longer play games I can’t win.
I’ve seen enough to know when a conversation is over—whether the other person realizes it.
And these days, when I see that moment?
I don’t argue.
I don’t plead.
I don’t try to make them understand.
I hang up.
And I move on with my life.
Until next time,
Anton
Dancer, Writer, Buddhist
P.S. If this resonates, forward it to someone who needs to read it.
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