Born to be Riled

You were predestined to meet me or one of my kind. It was written in the stars and was as likely to happen as the sun rising tomorrow morning. You see, you grew and developed as a healthy and normal person. One of the first gifts that you received was a moral compass and you have always found it to work. You were guided by a decent role model, one that showed you the value of compassion, caring and consideration. You have always prided yourself on being able to step into the shoes of others, see someone else’s point of view or imagine what it must be like to be in that other person’s position. It is natural for you to take an interest in the person you are talking with, to listen and engage with them. You are a shoulder to cry on, a pillar of support and a rock to others. Others turn to you in their hour of need. You are patient, tender and take great pleasure in helping other people. You might have made a career of it, becoming a doctor or nurse, an aid worker, a social worker, a counsellor or a charity employee. You have been shown the way by others and with your measured view of the world, developed a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong.

You believe in love. Love conquers all. All you need is love. Love changes everything. You believe that we should all show love to one another and in return we will be loved. That is all that you ask for, to be loved.

When you appear on our radar you shine brighter than everything else around you. The empathic radiance that emanates from you is a blazing beacon of benevolence. Our displays flash and light up, alerting us to your presence as the needles and gauges go off the scale. A massive fanker full of fuel has just cruised into view and we are duty bound to hijack it. We follow the path that is all too familiar to you now, of seducing you and dazzling you. You switch off your engines and weigh the anchor, content to dock with us. We have pulled alongside you and scramble over our bow to overwhelm you. It does not take long before we have burst onto the bridge, overpowered your captain and taken control of this tanker full to the brim of fuel. This hijacking is without violence or resistance, in fact your captain is not so much overpowered but rather he readily relinquishes control of the bridge to us, happy to place his trust in us. We have established our credentials through our repeated charm offensive. There can be no doubt that we have passed our mariner’s examinations and that we are fully qualified to control this tanker.

Yet this peaceful conquest does not satisfy us. There is no excitement or drama in achieving it so easily. Yes, at first we were content for this state of affairs to be the case. It was easy and pleasant and interesting for we had not been on this vessel before and its cargo, the ever so precious fuel was an unknown variety. Now we have been siphoning off the fuel for quite some time and we need to add a new ingredient to it to increase its potency as we maintain control of this vessel. We want to stir things up in the holds by charting a course through stormy waters. We might purposefully spring a leak, cut away the lifeboats and fire off the flares, before jamming the wheel so the tanker slowly drifts in circles, rolling and yawing through the mountainous waves giving the impression of vast movement but not actually going anywhere.

We have to annoy, provoke, irritate and rile you. This heightens the emotional responses and just like the storm battered tanker, we plough headlong into drama, turmoil and rage. In the same way that you were destined to care and exhibit considerable empathy, you were also damned to be the object of our games and manipulation, all with the aim of provoking you. You were blessed with the skills and traits of an empathic individual, but that blessing came with a price. You were cursed to become a prime target for our kind and to suffer the tortuous examinations of our warped minds that aimed to engender an emotional response from you. This would initially be benign but with that sinking sense of inevitable dread it would become one where you had no choice but to be subjected to manipulation, attack, insult and provocation. Riling you became the key objective. This would not work with those who are not of your stock. They would not be sucked in to begin with, or they would recognise what was happening and walk away and stay away. Not you, your empathic traits force you to try and heal and to fix despite the alarming levels of contemptuous harassment, abuse and demeaning treatment. Your empathy binds you to your tormentor as he or she delights in prodding you each and every day to garner that emotional reaction. You were raised to heal yet destined to be riled and all by our savage tongue and stinging hand.