My Anger Solution

Well folks, it’s been about a week since I last wrote anything. The past week has brought a lot of memories to the surface.

For now I want to talk about anger. We all have it. One of first few things I decided to change about myself was to deal with my anger. First I had to acknowledge I had it, which wasn’t easy.

Remember the person I spoke of before, with whom I moved to this city? Our adventure obviously didn’t end with hopping a bus. I believe it was some Higher Power, Serendipity, Fate, whatever you want to call it, that saw I was ready to change and thrust this person in my path; someone who was willing to go balls out (so to speak), say what needed saying, do what needed doing, for the greater good.

We packed up and left Hamilton, on a Greyhound bus, and 13 hours later we were in Sault Ste Marie. At first, life was exciting; lots of hope, and sunshine, and faith that we’d be Somebodies, we were going to change the world!

Walking 6-8 hours a day, looking for apartments that would allow us to live there. Meeting all manner of people, some nice, some rude, some sketchy, some shady-looking but with good hearts. And then we found a place.

Once we moved in, and were no longer nomads for the summer, the shine wore off the relationship. Living with that person, and trying to set a routine for his kids, trying to be a Mommy to kids I didn’t particularly like, as he’d raised them to be demanding little selfish brats. His loud mouth got him in trouble a lot, and the testosterone he was taking for his gender-switching worked only when he took it, which wasn’t regularly. In between, the Bitch came out.

Above: The Bitch in Rych.

It was at one of these times, that the peace of our quasi-life shattered. There was shouting, a fistfight, two shots to the face (by me, to his, btw), and me leaving in my slippers.

I had nowhere to go, so I stayed at a shelter, and had to come to some hard truths about my life. Where did I want to go? What did I want to do? Who did I want to be? These weren't things I'd thought about before, but I knew that I needed to change. The people I was with tended to be reflections, mirrors of myself, and I am grateful I saw them. I realized soon enough, that I had anger issues. I would bottle my rage up for YEARS, against myself, against others, and then without any warning, it would blow and someone would get hurt, usually not me, but sometimes.

I tried to date again after deciding that I had to work on these problems with my emotions, but it lasted a month and a half before there was another explosion, and this time, a lot of his blood spilled. (Though to be fair, he knew I was going through a lot of soul-searching, and that people had attacked me before, so he shouldn’t have been surprised that when he leapt on me I reacted like a rabid, cornered badger, with teeth and everything).

Also frightened. Badgers are rarely frightened, but you get the idea.

I stopped dating for about a month, but I was lonely. New city, middle of winter, didn’t know a ton of people. Tried a few times to meet people from online dating services, just to have some friends, someone to spend time with, and nothing went anywhere productive. I chose one boy because he was the exact opposite of the previous: instead of tall, short; instead of strong, weak; and instead of exceptionally masculine, this boy was very effeminate. We got along, had things in common, and it was nice to have someone to hug regularly, even if we didn’t sleep together very much at all. That ended about 2 months later, when I broke it off, saying that I was interested in spending time somewhere that was not his house; his friends were for the most part, NOT the types of people I wanted to spend time with, and he never did much without them. I was also very interested in another man I’d met online, strictly as friends at first while I was with the other, but on my side, it was developing into more than that.

That ended as well, not long after it started (couple of months), as I’d never really met someone decent (male/dating) who was interested in spending time with me, up til that point. I became very clingy, because hey, when you’ve had crap-sandwiches all your life, someone hands you a ham & swiss and you hold onto that sucker! He walked away. I broke, I healed, I still grieve sometimes for what could have been, but I've healed.

I had a lot of trouble trying to keep hold of any relationships while fighting myself. I had a lot of weeks, even months, where I couldn’t do ANYTHING. If I didn’t have my best friend around, I’d probably have never gotten where I have today. I yelled at him, screamed, raged, demanded he leave, and he just smiled and said, "No." He was the best thing that ever happened to me, and after experiencing what I have recently, I am even more amazed by his incredible patience. It must be the divas he's had to work with; rages and screamfests are easysauce to deal with.

Working on the anger was hard, because I had to acknowledge I had it, and what to do when I felt it. My typical reaction was to just smile and let it bottle up. That worked until I recognized what it was, then it wouldn’t stay bottled! Having to constantly remind myself that OTHER PEOPLE cannot MAKE you feel emotions, YOU are in charge, was the hardest part. It’s so much an ingrained habit to say to someone you’re arguing with, “Yea well, YOU made me angry, so it’s YOUR FAULT!” I had to remind myself to say instead, “When you do this, I feel this emotion, and I don’t like feeling that way. How can we solve this?” To converse, instead of accuse. To look for a solution, rather than just bemoan the problem.

When you have one side working hard to change themselves, and the other side refuses to help, it’s even more difficult. The person I was with at the time I started the Anger Solutions program, (call him M) had what I call White Knight Syndrome. As long as I was helpless, and didn’t know where I wanted to go in life, and didn’t wanna work too hard, he was Everything To Me Man. As soon as I started changing my thoughts, my behaviours, to reflect the person I wanted to be, as soon as I started to try and achieve better for myself, I was a lost cause and he picked fights with me as often as he could. I look back and see that he had the same problems I did, he just never wanted to deal with them himself, and by having me around doing so, it made him face uncomfortable truths he didn’t want to face.

I felt unlovable. I felt unwanted, and broken, and useless. Worthless. Nobody loved me, because I wasn’t good enough. I grew up thinking that I had to be everything for a partner in order to be fulfilled. I had to take care of them, feed them, make sure they remembered important things, basically, I believed I had to be a Mother to everyone I dated, so they’d see I was useful, important, and had to keep me around. I had to feel needed.

PLEASE LOVE ME!

I still sometimes feel that way.  It’s good to be needed, to be depended on for doing what you’ve promised. I was taking it too far. I was trying to do my own version of the White Knight. I’d meet broken people and want to fix them, change them into what they said they wanted, help them live, but in the meantime, I felt lousy. I had to help them, because they wouldn’t help themselves. They’d sit and moan about not being able to do something, get something, feel something, buy something, understand something, and I’d be there, giving them what they had to have. I felt like I couldn’t have a life, because I had to take care of them. And I hated it. With M, I hated it so much more because I saw him doing the exact things I was trying to change in myself. It was a very hard lesson to get through, but I did it.

I’ve been accused of not being patient enough. Maybe that is true. I get impatient when I see something fixable, not being fixed. I want to do it, so I know it’s done, and we can all move on. But how does that help who I fixed things for? Does it help them learn how to fend for themselves?

I feel angry very rarely now, or rather, I express my feelings more than I did before.

Lately I’ve bottled them up, but it’s never longer than a few days. It’s still just as painful to let out those feelings, but now I am not inarticulate with rage, sputtering and hating myself because I can’t communicate my feelings when I’m that angry. Now I let it out, still not rehearsing in my head what I’ll say (I’ve never really been good at that, maybe something else to work on so I don’t sound dumb) but it tends to make more sense when I do speak while angry.

Not many people have seen me angry, and I like that. I like knowing that I’ve had a good handle on my feelings since working so hard to change how I see myself, and see the world.

There’s a phrase I saw recently: You can't live a positive life with a negative mind.

So, blog reader-friends, when those angry, negative thoughts come up, remember to change them to positive ones. Yes, it’s Work. Yes, it’s hard to stick to it. But it can be done.  The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

I did it, and I’m still working on it. But I can’t do it for you. You have to want the change in yourself, so you have to work for it. And remember, when you achieve something all by yourself, it’s that much more rewarding when you accomplish your goal.

Here’s to faith in ourselves.