The Cycle Of Abuse

People abuse each other.
That is a fact.
It can be verbal, it can be emotional, it can be physical, it can be sexual, it can predatory for monetary gain.
It can be manipulative, it be can be deceptive. It can be cruelty cloaked in humor. It can be subtle or overt sarcasm. 
It can take any shape or any form in its expression.
However, the cycle itself is quite predictable.
It works like this:
The abuser abuses. That means the abuser insults, hollers, bullies, cheats, hits, lies, steals money, whatever.
Then other person... the victim or target... takes it.
Hopefully the target/victim lives through it.
Then the abuse stops for a window of time while the abuser cools off in jail, or leaves, or gets his/her sanity back, temporarily.
Then, the abuser, appearing humbled courts the victim by providing apologies, excuses, love.
The victim thinks he or she is going crazy.
How can someone be so kind one moment and cruel the next?
Is it a Jekyll and Hyde thing? Or more a Sybil, multiple personality thing?
Or is it just a learned....behavioral...or genetic... thing?
Passed down from one multi-generational dysfunctional family to another?

After the abuse episode, everything appears cool...
though the victim is really walking on eggshells or shattered glass...
until the abuser begins to heat up again.
One wrong move, word, question, look, action... on the victim's part.... and the abuser goes from 0 to warp(ed) speed instantaneously.
It happens over and over and over again... usually, escalating.

For some people the cycle of abuse begins in childhood.
For others, it begins in a relationship.
And for others still, the abuse is self directed.

I think the following song reflects what an abuse victim feels.
Abuse is a form of  living death.
And the cycle of abuse doesn't stop, until someone (ideally, the abuser) dies, or some powerful legal or higher force intervenes.
And the latter, that intervention part, is usually only temporary.

Thank you to my friend Denida Zinxhira, for the link to above song.
I don't know a better way to show what I am saying here.