I heard it from my father all the time:

"Ah, my nerves are shot...." 

It sounded simultaneously like a plea and an excuse. The plea: Stop talking, stop making noise of any kind, leave me the fuck alone. The excuse: No, I don't want to go out and do anything, I just want to be left the fuck alone. 

Hypersensitive to overstimulation, one could say. When the man wanted quiet, you gave him quiet. You didn't want him telling you to shut up, nor did you want my mother telling you to shut up––it only meant that she was serving as a buffer between him and you, and buffers by nature get worn thin. 

I know this man because I've become this man. 

Sometimes at home or in crowds it gets too loud for me and I shut down. My own personal buffer between the overstimulation of the world and the core of my being that wishes to remain quiet and still gets broken down, and that stillbeing gets assaulted by gangs of thugs known as mychildren and otherpeople and thingstodo. 

My buffering nerves can't shield me anymore and I get weak, I get dysfunctional, I can't concentrate, I can't listen, I can't speak. Medically this would be known as a type of anxiety disorder, and once upon a time in my early years of parenthood I was treated for it. I took low doses of Xanax daily for a few months, and it sucked––just made me numb.

Now I have a Xanax prescription for times of acute anxiety. Can't sleep because I'm freaking out over my son's blood sugars. Have a dozen screaming seven-year-olds over for a birthday party. Have to hang out in a room full of strangers where I can't ear a damn thing. When I have an episode like this, I ask myself:

How did I get this way?

and the answer must be some version of the battle knowns as nature vs. nurture. I resemble my father both physically and psychologically, and over time I've embraced some of those resemblances––a process do doubt exacerbated by losing him so early in my life and clinging so desperately to any resemblances that would let me grip him.

Okay, so the problem of how I get there is answered. It remains to be seen what this has to do with desecration and anger, since we're embedded in paths about desecration and anger. The answer is: 

desecration leads to
anger leads to 
resentment leads to 
gotta have things my way or else leads to
leave me the fuck alone. 

Q.E.D., as the geometrists say. Quod erst demonstrandum. (I have proven my point.) By the way, once my nerves got shot so bad I thought they were going to kill me.