Rage: pure, unfiltered, unadulterated anger. I have become too familiar with this feeling as of late, and I am not happy about it. I am used to feeling annoyed, irritated, frustrated, mad, upset, disillusioned and displeased. Rage is new. I looked it up in the dictionary to see how it differs from regular anger: it is defined as "violent, uncontrollable anger." The rage I have been feeling lately certainly is uncontrollable. I don't want to be angry, but this anger has a mind of its own. And violent. The rage doesn't make me violent towards other people, but it feels like there is violence inside of me, wanting to get out and scream, kick and bite. I mostly just scream.
(I could list all of the things I am angry about here, but I won't. Privately, I can list out the people and things that are the victims of my unregulated emotions.)
I mostly wonder why this anger isn't just regular anger: why does this tip it over into rage? I look at people like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi. Surely, they saw unfairness in the world and sought to correct it. How did they manage to keep their emotions in check while dealing with major social injustices and I can't keep it together over my son's Lego Club? Do I have the misfortune of being at the whims of a middle aged woman's hormones? Or, has my crap-meter hit the "maxed out" state and the next thing that came along pushed me over the line? There have been cases (see the recent redrawing of the Seattle Public Schools boundaries) where I have kept my cool while the rest of the people I knew were in nuclear meltdown. Is my current rage over these new issues stored up old rage, locked up inside of me, looking for a way out?
I wish I knew. I've talked to friends about my recent bouts, but in the context of the specific irritating circumstance. I want to know why I feel rage at all, why the topic of annoyance consumes my mind. I become fixated, unable to think of little else. And my fixation isn't productive. I am not able to rationally find a solution. Instead, I find more reasons to justify why I am so pissed off. "And another thing..." The closest thing I can find it that the root cause is the discrepancies between the way I think the world runs (or Lego Club or Rec soccer) and the way other people thinks it should. In the gap between the two resides my anger. The anger also lies with my kids activities. Maybe I am not as in touch with them as I used to be, and that gap causes me turmoil. I need to rely on others to take care of my kids, just as I take care of other children. This change and transition means loss of control.
Maybe Gandhi and Mandela felt lots of rage, but were effective at managing it. Maybe they needed to defeat apartheid and English Rule to keep the demons away. Likewise, maybe Gandhi's kids got on his nerves. Maybe Mandela's friends didn't do what they said they said they were going to do. Maybe apartheid and English Rule were small mountains to climb compared to managing a house and kids.
I have been somewhat lucky that my anger has fallen during the holidays, and a little "holly jolly" has helped me feel better. At times when the rage ebbs, I have felt like George Bailey before he jumped off the bridge and Clarence saved him.* Like George, I reached my nadir in the Christmas season. One day when I was angry, we bought our Christmas tree, went to dinner, and we came home and put up the decorations. It was hard to stay mad when I was digging through boxes finding ornaments I made when I was seven. The other time I had three parties to attend. I put on a happy face and told myself "No bitching allowed." By the end of the evening, I didn't need to fake it.
* Funny sidebar. My friend Heather and I watched "It's a Wonderful Life" in high school. My parents were out and I turned it off when George was marching through the snow after all of the money in the bank was lost. My mom came home and asked if I liked it. I said it was the most depressing movie I had ever seen and couldn't watch it anymore. I didn't understand why it was this great Christmas classic. She recommended I watch the end.
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
No comments:
Post a Comment