Sacred Life Sunday: Anger is a part of life, too

I've mentioned here before that I have a horrible temper. It's not cute. It's not funny. It is a character flaw.

I know that. It's a rather revolting character flaw and I don't like it at all. When I get really angry, it's hard to identify colors. It's a seething, rocket-propelled instant trip to somewhere I'd rather never go again. Typically, it's called a "hair trigger temper". I get over it as quickly as it comes on but I'm like a raging bull for 15-30 seconds. Then I'm spent. The only good thing is that others rarely see it so I don't have to spend the rest of my life on my knees, apologizing. I have enough consciousness to leave a situation before it gets to that point.

It's a dangerous place to go. In my case, given other health problems, it could send me straight into a stroke.

For the past three weeks or so, I've been angry at someone and didn't tell her about it. I kept thinking it would resolve itself.

She contacted me this morning and I went ballistic.

Here's the issue: She was unreliable. She told me she was going to do something, didn't do it and didn't even acknowledge that she'd left me in a lurch. The circumstances are irrelevant. Let's just say that I showed up and she didn't. Then she came along a few days later, made a commitment to do something and never followed through.

Then she merrily traipsed into my world this morning, ringing my cell phone at an ungodly hour and started sweet-talking about something totally unrelated, as though none of it ever happened. She wanted me to do something.

Ugh. Argh! I was so pissed off, I saw spots. Unfortunately, I said some things that shouldn't have been said and were decidedly un-Buddhist. I snapped the phone shut.

That seems to be one of my greatest triggers. I do take responsibility seriously and I value my word. I might be late. I might screw it up - but if I say I'm going to do something, it happens. If some cataclysmic event occurs and I can't follow through, I apologize. And I mean it!

I also am very forgiving, as long as someone acknowledges that they did make a commitment and didn't keep it.

That's not really the issue though. In the larger sense, I've come to the conclusion that anger is a part of living. We all get pissed off. I don't believe anyone who says they never experience anger. Such a person is either dead or numbed out on some chemical. We all get mad.

The point is being able to use the anger to build bridges, not burn them.

I burned one this morning. And there's no repairing it. The damage is too extensive.

So.. this could be an interesting discussion. How do you use anger to create a bridge, rather than burning it?

I have a lot to learn there. Obviously.

~*

Hot flashes of red and yellow....

Last night, I got furious with someone.

Knock down, drag-out, clouds parting.. rage.

It doesn't matter why or to whom. It only matters that apparently there is still a store of rage within me and whenever it gets tapped, I have physical and emotional consequences. That kind of rage releases all sorts of toxins into our bodies.

It was ugly. I was ugly. I was a foul-mouthed shrew and can't even remember now the majority of what I said.

The person with whom I got so angry was asked for forgiveness and gave it.

The point is that today I have no energy. I've been entertaining myself on Yahoo Answers, mindlessly answering one right after the other, anything to distract myself from the ugliness I manifested, knowing that it came from the bowels of my being. I'm not a kid anymore and these are the kinds of things that bring about heart attacks and strokes. At one point, I could only see white spots, black and white. I thought I was a goner. I couldn't catch my breath.

I thought I'd evolved beyond this, that no one and nothing could possibly bring it out again.

And today I am spent. There's nothing left. Just the remnants. Inside of me is a war zone.. broken pieces scattered around on the landscape of who I thought I had become.
~*

Blow out...

Okay. I think I'll talk about this openly.

If anyone has noticed, De and I seem to go through similar cycles. She's had the courage to shut it down a few times and I haven't gotten there yet.

I'd like to talk about this blog insecurity stuff for a few minutes because I'm curious if others experience it.

This morning, I deleted a long, considered post about how I became part of this "family" here and why I find the idea of leaving to be difficult. For one thing, I'm an extremely loyal person. Loyalty isn't suspended because it's inconvenient. Things got tough here yesterday and I was seriously challenged. Still, I find the idea of bailing to be intolerable. D. and I have had a relationship for over ten years now and the idea of leaving her for my own comfort when she depends on me as much as she does is something I could not live with. When the day is done and all is told, all I've got is my integrity left.

She has problems, certainly. She is excitable and overly emotional. She doesn't always have a good handle on things but if there's anything of which I am certain, she has one of the biggest hearts I've ever known. Like many people, she has a lot of trouble setting boundaries.

But this is how I live in the world. These principles matter a lot. I get the shit for it more than I'd ever care to write about here. You can't imagine. People aren't always nice.. and they're not always kind or considerate. They do what they want, regardless of how it will affect anyone else. It sucks.. but there it is.

So, that said.. why did I delete the post? Here's where I am brutally honest.

I didn't feel like it measured up to the other sites I regularly read. It sat there and quivered for two hours and I blew it off the page. Click. Gone. It made me feel inadequate and ignored to see it sitting there so long.. so I thought "okay.. rather than sit here and feel humiliated any further, I'll just take it down." I did it with some resentment. While I do have a commitment to a certain way of life, I'm not perfect. There's no Bodhi tree in my backyard and I don't have all the answers. Hell, I'm lucky if I have a few ... now and then. I stumble and fall and when I stumble and fall, I fall hard. My decisions are always questionable when I get in that frame of mind.

Part of it is the fact that I have a mood disorder but that's only a small part of it. It mostly comes from plain old-fashioned insecurity. It's the kind that no one gets to just grow up and be rid of it. I'm headed toward senior citizenship and I still fall to it, more than I like to admit.

~*

Now, the blogging insecurity stuff. I've been bitten hard by it, have seen others bitten hard by it .. and there are things I just wonder about.

I wonder if everyone experiences it.

I also wonder why some people can publish their freaking grocery lists and others slavishly can't wait to get in line to say something.

This baffles me. It is one of the core things that has baffled me about social interaction in general. It has driven me to complete isolation in the past because I gave up on it. I stopped trying to understand.

There are others who pour out their hearts and souls in a brutally honest manner and they are not acknowledged. (I've noticed this at several sites. I'm not referring to this one at this point. I have a wonderful gathering of people, even though I don't have as many as some.. and more than others. This site is not one of the "popular" sites, but I do think people appreciate my honesty. More on this site another time. I'm not ready to discuss that.)

What I know... what little I know from my limited life experience .. is that we are all struggling here on this plane of existence, doing the best we can with what we have. A little bit of kindness goes a long way... and the wisdom each of us has gathered should be shared freely. (God swat me down! I used a no-no word in this culture: should ~ but I stand by it.) We should .. absolutely.

If anyone can enlighten me as to why this popularity stuff goes on here, please let me know. It is beginning to irritate the crap out of me. I see people being hurt by this. I've been hurt by it. I suspect everyone has at one time or another.

My ears are open. Comment anonymously if you like.