nezua:

being hit as a child teaches you many things, i’d guess. mostly, it teaches you that might makes right. and as a child, you will have no argument against that. and so it is likely that you will learn it well.

being hit as a child may teach other things. but below and beyond intellect and language, it teaches you rage. because as a child, in the context of physical autonomy, your sense of justice is fully developed. it is perfect, like a little sun shining in your center. nobody needs to specifically teach you that it is unjust for a larger person to deal violence to someone so unfairly matched to defend themselves. your rage will spring from your natural born sense of injustice, and no lesson or lecture will mitigate that. and neither will anyone need to explain to you what happens, eventually, to trust spent foolishly—such as on a rain of blows launched in a few moments of dis-ease. 

and even if you cannot articulate that with your yet-limited vocabulary, being corrected or punished with physical force places violence in your mix; on your map; in your bones. sows it within you. stores it in so many still-burgeoning cells to blossom one fine day, dotting the body then with splashes of karma…like a time-bomb harvest under the skin of a new planet. whether that body self destructs later in some way, or aims the blasts outward is yet to be seen. but a harvest will be realized.

violence is radioactive, as my old professor put it.

I’ve had several conversations about this with my mother, and one of the things I told her was that it teaches that might makes right.