Case 11: Silent Treatment

When we were kids, you always find ways to make my life hell. It was a time of constant rivalry and fighting, and I hated you more and more as the days passed by. During the younger years, I retaliated by throwing things at you (coins, stones, carpentry tools), which surely got me punished afterwards. And so I tried to deal with you in a different way, which was a bit safer for the both of us. I tried silent treatment--three types of it.
First, I tried avoidance. I merely maintained a distance of five meters away from you. I do not enter a room you are in or I leave a room as you enter it. But then, you thought it was a game so you followed me everywhere I went. You celebrated every time you found me while I am hiding from you. That only irritated me more.
Then, I tried denial. I just ignore your existence. I cannot see, hear, touch and smell, and never tasted you. But then, you hardly even noticed that I am ignoring you. And it was utterly a complete waste of mind energy to erase your existence when you did not even care. That only infuriated me more.
Lastly, I tried aloofness. I simply treated you as a stranger, or probably someone I meet in the streets. And, at last, this one worked. You hated it and hated me because of it and that spelled victory for me. But then, I felt weird about it. Something had changed inside me. That had left me wondering.
Now, I use the silent treatment whenever I have a conflict with someone, and I am almost always the first one to give up and try to reconcile. Loneliness often gets in the way of pride. Perhaps because I do not have the luxury for things to end up in another case similar to ours.