Life is not all joy

What we deserve and what we settle for. It seems like life really wants me to learn this lesson right now. The things I have in my life right now are the things I settled for but that doesn’t mean they are the things I deserve. I accept that and can admit that while some things are awful, other things are great. I’m hoping to soon make the awful things ALSO great things and keep the great, then I really can’t imagine what life will feel like. All that aside, I saw something today that absolutely disgusted me and also made me remember the saying, “we get what we settle for.” I was teaching my last class of the day and we finished early. They had actually been really good (sometimes they’re little shits) and so instead of reviewing we free talked. They still had to speak English, but we weren’t really talking about anything in particular and there were only 15 minutes of class left anyways. My boss comes in and gives them some fried squid left over from that morning and leaves. Five minutes later I hear YELLING. This isn’t uncommon, my boss has a really intense temper but usually he can scream it out in 10 minutes or so. Also, there were three classes going on at the time so I figured this was just another passing tantrum. It lasted awhile, then I heard his wife speaking Korean, then I heard him yell some more, then he threw some stuff, then he threw large things up against the wall of my classroom (I actually think he threw HER up against the wall of my classroom since the whole thing shook), then he yelled more, then he threw more stuff, then she talked, then he slapped her, and I think it stopped then. If I remember correctly, he went into his office and slammed the door. Obviously, at this point my students aren’t studying. They can’t even hear me because of all the yelling and it’s very distracting since my boss and his wife were fighting like this right outside my door. But once his office door slammed I figured that was it. One of my students, a girl, told me she was scared. I told her she shouldn’t be scared, she should be angry. I asked her if she thought it was okay that he did that and she said no. I told her she was right and that she should NEVER let a man treat her that way. She just nodded. There was thankfully only five minutes left of class so I didn’t have to fill too much awkward time. I was so angry that my boss thought doing something like that was okay, especially with children around and in a workplace. Ridiculous. Class lets out and I punch out. As I’m punching out he starts in on his wife again except this time he is yelling and throwing things simultaneously and with me 2 feet away. There was also 2 other teachers very nearby and one teacher had to kind of skip out of the way. I pressed the button for the elevator and it was then that he got SO angry that he started throwing glass at her. Coffee cups to be specific…not sure if it was the coffeepot too since I wasn’t at the right angle to observe. A Korean teacher then told us we really had to leave, even though we WERE leaving and just waiting for the elevator. I was really upset by this for obvious reasons. Besides the fact that he is abusive to his wife, I LEFT without doing anything. I had no idea what to do. The Korean teacher than left with us said that the police wouldn’t have done anything and if I would have stayed he probably would have hurt me too, but I still felt guilty for just walking away. I was disgusted that my boss felt he was within his rights to treat her that way. That is how you treat a dog. And in America, you can’t even treat a dog that way. Here is where the story gets even worse.I walked most of the way home with two other teachers and we talked about what we just saw. Our conversation wandered to some other shady business going on such as my co worker not having health insurance but has already been employed 4 months. She’s really angry about this and my boss’s wife was supposed to take care of it yesterday but didn’t. Once she found this out and a few other things she said something to the effect that my boss’s wife deserved what she got today. I nearly snapped. No woman deserves abuse from her husband, no matter how forgetful or bitchy that woman happens to be. She kinda took it back when she realized I did not agree even a little bit with her comment, and I know she said it out of anger about how she is being treated but not having health insurance does not justify domestic violence. That’s on par with saying rape is justified by the victim’s clothing. There you go. I don’t really think my boss’s wife deserves to be treated as she is. I think she needs to leave my boss or get the police involved or something. But…she is accepting it. I deserve a better job than what I have now, but I accept what I have now. The difference there is I am accepting it until I find that better job. It seems we can always accept the present if we know there is some sort of brighter future.