Grown Up:

You turn up the volume on the television as I fire back in this silly unemotional debate we're having. I stop, stunned mid-sentence as the volume drowns me out and you render me invisible, irrelevant. The last of childhood's scales fall from my eyes and now you have to earn what was once freely and worshipfully given: my respect.

I guess you got your parting shot, but its mark wasn't what you intended.

"this silly unemotional"

Was the "un" intended?

Yup. Very deliberately so.

Ok, sorry. In that case I don't really get it.

That's ok. It was meant to convey that there wasn't any hysteria or dramatics that might've warranted a shut down.

Ah, I was trying to read too much into it. I was thinking about a completely cold fight with no emotion behind it - the fierce argument equivalent of passionless sex, and trying to see what clue I missed that that was what was going on.

Yeah, I kinda failed. It was a parent/child thing. A boring debate, absent of any real import, that suddenly becomes a huge emotional break but not for the content of the original debate. Oh well, I don't attempt to make my living at this.

sarameg, it worked for me. Maybe because it's one of the reasons my ex is my ex.

I suspect it is something that like sees like when I'm not really clear. In my case (yeah, that was autobio) it was me & my dad when I was an early teen. I'm over it in the sense that I love him dearly, faults and all, and CAN love him faults and all. But it was a rude awakening at the time and probably a harsh and early wake up. It was .. harsh. And shocking.

Sara, for what it's worth, I totally got it. Nice job.