LJ Idol Season 8, Week 7, Bupkis, Danger
Whenever I think of the word anger I put a D in front of it, and that spells Danger with a capital D. As a child I threw horrible temper tantrums, but not just as a two or three-year-old, I was lying on the floor, kicking and screaming at age eight and nine. Apparently this is less common than toddlers throwing all out tantrums. It progressed to my teens where I would yell and scream and throw things. I smashed my brother’s telephone with a twenty-five-pound weight I was trying to hurl at him. The sad thing was that he had saved his own allowance to buy a large print and Braille phone that I could use more easily, and I ruined it beyond any repair. I broke a window launching a hair brush at my mother’s head. I was in big trouble for that one.
It wasn’t just my own anger that spiraled out of control. I witnessed violence at home every day. My father, an abusive alcoholic, would throw things at my mother, beat my brother, scream at me until I cowered in fear, and even threatened to shoot our entire family on two separate occasions. I lived in a fiery hell of blazing anger.
Learning to calm myself when I was angry was not an easy task. My mother was the master teacher. She is one of those people who can be in the middle of a conversation, and as it turns to an argument, she’ll back off and state that she won’t discuss it until the other person calms down and isn’t yelling. As you can imagine, this frustrated me to no end as a teen. I wanted a fight. I wanted the kind of screaming match the neighbors could hear. After all, wasn’t that how life was supposed to go?
After the broken window I think mom and I both realized that I was totally out of control. Probably my hormones were largely at play, but nothing is a good excuse for violence toward others. So slowly, painstakingly, I worked to curb my anger. The only way I really knew to control it was to shove it deep inside. So I crammed and I crammed like stuffing a large sleeping bag into a too small carrying case. Soon it became like stuffing an elephant into a regular sized bedroom closet.
Now I have a problem.
I am having obsessive suicidal thoughts and obsessive desires to harm myself. They are like daggers in my brain. They pop up out of nowhere, as if someone threw them at me in the dark. They penetrate my skull, and delve into the core of my brain. Then in my obsessive way I grab hold of their handles and twist, back and forth, back and forth. I wish I could stop but my hands are glued to the handles of those dagger like thoughts like bark to a tree. Hopefully eventually I’ll shed them, but for now I’m dealing with these thoughts several times a day and watching them bore deeper and deeper into my mind as I can’t let go.
I saw my psychologist the other day and she thinks anger is a large part of the problem. I don’t express it. I don’t let off steam about my life circumstances which can be on the rougher side. I accept and accept, bending like a willow, strong but willing to sway to survive any storm. It is how I am made. If there is more pain, I will find a way to tolerate it. More sorrow, I can take that on too. I might need meds, and the pills are piling up, and I might need doctors, therapists, and holistic practitioners, but I’ll find a way. The anger must not come out though. That elephant’s tail shall remain firmly tucked in the closet.
So when the psychologist suggested I needed to express some anger I thought, “What anger?” There is no anger here. I put it all away. I have nothing. I am without anger and therefore without Danger.
The more we talked the more I could relate to her idea and feel the possibility of it setting me free from the suicidal thoughts, or at least maybe getting them to back off a little so that I can breathe and feel safe again. The problem is, I honestly don’t know where the anger has gone. I can’t find the closet I stuffed it into. On top of that, if I did find the closet I don’t know how to go about unpacking the elephant without an explosion. That’s why I have a smart psychologist to help walk me through this process.
It’s a strange thing, feeling nothing. It’s like you remember what anger felt like, and there is a shadow of what used to be there in full force, but it is only a ghost of what was. Sometimes my anger flares if someone says something I don’t like, bothers my guide dog, or nearly runs me over in traffic, but I try to do away with it as quickly as I can. I can’t let it build up, because then it becomes the dreaded Danger.
I have no idea what’s in store for me next. Certainly I’ll find a way to feel the anger again. Instead of nothing I will probably feel rage. For example, today one of my doctors told me there was nothing he could give me for my higher pain days. No more medicine to stop the pain. I told him that sucked, but the anger, it wasn’t there. Only sadness and acceptance of my fate. No wonder I feel suicidal. I have no control of a lot of the troubling things in my life, and I can’t express my anger because I have nothing. Nothing is not an easy way to feel. I’m beginning to think it’s like Danger with a capital D.
It wasn’t just my own anger that spiraled out of control. I witnessed violence at home every day. My father, an abusive alcoholic, would throw things at my mother, beat my brother, scream at me until I cowered in fear, and even threatened to shoot our entire family on two separate occasions. I lived in a fiery hell of blazing anger.
Learning to calm myself when I was angry was not an easy task. My mother was the master teacher. She is one of those people who can be in the middle of a conversation, and as it turns to an argument, she’ll back off and state that she won’t discuss it until the other person calms down and isn’t yelling. As you can imagine, this frustrated me to no end as a teen. I wanted a fight. I wanted the kind of screaming match the neighbors could hear. After all, wasn’t that how life was supposed to go?
After the broken window I think mom and I both realized that I was totally out of control. Probably my hormones were largely at play, but nothing is a good excuse for violence toward others. So slowly, painstakingly, I worked to curb my anger. The only way I really knew to control it was to shove it deep inside. So I crammed and I crammed like stuffing a large sleeping bag into a too small carrying case. Soon it became like stuffing an elephant into a regular sized bedroom closet.
Now I have a problem.
I am having obsessive suicidal thoughts and obsessive desires to harm myself. They are like daggers in my brain. They pop up out of nowhere, as if someone threw them at me in the dark. They penetrate my skull, and delve into the core of my brain. Then in my obsessive way I grab hold of their handles and twist, back and forth, back and forth. I wish I could stop but my hands are glued to the handles of those dagger like thoughts like bark to a tree. Hopefully eventually I’ll shed them, but for now I’m dealing with these thoughts several times a day and watching them bore deeper and deeper into my mind as I can’t let go.
I saw my psychologist the other day and she thinks anger is a large part of the problem. I don’t express it. I don’t let off steam about my life circumstances which can be on the rougher side. I accept and accept, bending like a willow, strong but willing to sway to survive any storm. It is how I am made. If there is more pain, I will find a way to tolerate it. More sorrow, I can take that on too. I might need meds, and the pills are piling up, and I might need doctors, therapists, and holistic practitioners, but I’ll find a way. The anger must not come out though. That elephant’s tail shall remain firmly tucked in the closet.
So when the psychologist suggested I needed to express some anger I thought, “What anger?” There is no anger here. I put it all away. I have nothing. I am without anger and therefore without Danger.
The more we talked the more I could relate to her idea and feel the possibility of it setting me free from the suicidal thoughts, or at least maybe getting them to back off a little so that I can breathe and feel safe again. The problem is, I honestly don’t know where the anger has gone. I can’t find the closet I stuffed it into. On top of that, if I did find the closet I don’t know how to go about unpacking the elephant without an explosion. That’s why I have a smart psychologist to help walk me through this process.
It’s a strange thing, feeling nothing. It’s like you remember what anger felt like, and there is a shadow of what used to be there in full force, but it is only a ghost of what was. Sometimes my anger flares if someone says something I don’t like, bothers my guide dog, or nearly runs me over in traffic, but I try to do away with it as quickly as I can. I can’t let it build up, because then it becomes the dreaded Danger.
I have no idea what’s in store for me next. Certainly I’ll find a way to feel the anger again. Instead of nothing I will probably feel rage. For example, today one of my doctors told me there was nothing he could give me for my higher pain days. No more medicine to stop the pain. I told him that sucked, but the anger, it wasn’t there. Only sadness and acceptance of my fate. No wonder I feel suicidal. I have no control of a lot of the troubling things in my life, and I can’t express my anger because I have nothing. Nothing is not an easy way to feel. I’m beginning to think it’s like Danger with a capital D.