Those who have lived through this know how easily it metastasizes into a deep-seated belief that one’s interpretation of reality, especially when reality is ambiguous or uncertain,is always the wrong one, the faulty one, the one fully invalidated by the mere existence of another’s interpretation.
What I got from you — and you are, whenever it is a matter of your own affairs, an excellent talker — was a hesitant, stammering mode of speech, and even that was still too much for you, and finally I kept silent, at first perhaps out of defiance, and then..
..because I could neither think nor speak in your presence.
by direct blows than by toxic osmosis, that soul-squashing effect of being in the presence of an angry and spiritually draining despot:
be you. 