There are few things worse than living in a battle zone that won't admit that it is a battle zone. It's like trying to figure out how a cold wind blows. It surrounds you, makes you feel bad but you can't pin point how it is hurting you. It is uncomfortable and spins into more resentment. It is the price of bad communication via anger that is buried in denial.
Many of us will recognize festering anger immediately if it is right after a bad fight. Everything is fine. But is it? That fight was really recent. The knife wounds have barely started scabbing up yet. You know that you are speaking civilly but all of the voices are rerunning inside your head in the very very back. The resolutions may be there but the safety that was rattled in the relationship is not solid again. No one is trusting the other. Yet. Until you are sure it isn't going to bite you in the ass. It is even harder if there has been no fight that you know of and you still have to live with the anger.
Sometimes, some people say that they are fine but their actions are permeated with resentment. You can feel the anger if it is directed at you but the person won't concede to being mad. They smile without their eyes matching the mouth but the body never completely relaxes. The hand is in a balled fist. They flinch when they are touched.
It takes a whole lot of denial to maintain the anger. Trying to live with it that can be maintained for a while. Sooner or later, though, something has to give. Or the walls become so completely solid that uncomfortable becomes normal. I guess it depends on the stubborn elements of the other parties involved.
How long can it last? Years? Whole life times? I guess it depends on the person that is the begrudged that won't be openly begrudged and the quality of life the subjects at hand are willing to live with.
In my experience, a non-friendship based roommate situation tends to get resolved the fastest because you are essentially strangers other wise. It comes to a head fairly quickly if it is going to come to a head at all. Someone gets kicked out or you learn to live with it. Long as the bathroom stays clean and the bills gets paid and you don't have to sleep in the same room, oh well if they can't communicate well. Moving is inconvenient but you still can if it really stinks. If you can't avoid walking on egg shells, step on them. Too bad if the roommate has bad communication skills. Not your problem if you can deal with a grumpy demeanor.
Friends who hold quiet grudges are stickier because the urge to cut and run is often bigger than the bullshit that you have to get through to admit there is a problem. Pick a fight? Confrontation? You might be willing to let it go but you may not even know what needs to be dropped. They smile tightly and say in a distant tense voice, "Wrong? No. Nothings wrong." And you know they are lying. You can feel it. It isn't your imagination. One of the beauties of a truly good friendship is that you have probably had moments like this before. You lived. And if there isn't a way to reconcile the friendship to a place you both feel comfortable with each other, maybe you just aren't friends anymore.
For me, relatives are the least complicated because it takes a whole lot to get rid of a relative. It is safe to approach the angry person and say, "Hey, you are obviously pissed off. What's wrong with you?" Openly. Without fear. I know I am going to spend the rest of my life with them so it is better to call them to the mat via kindness, bluntness or sarcasm and get it over with. I grew up with these people. Our communication styles are the same. We know how to speak to each other because we sound similar. Hopefully, no one is looking for a fight under it all, but if they are, at least I am going to get a solution.
Spouses, life partners, live-in significant others are the ones that really suck. Really really suck. Because anger usually has some kind of trust issue attached to it. It smells like hurt and you caused it somehow. This is a person you chose to take into your life and the person chose to have you in theirs. In an extreme situation, they can un-choose. You can lose someone who is so attached to your heart, ego and mental well being that if there is a wall of anger that they won't speak about, you may be a hesitant to find out just what is going on in there. You may have come too close to being a statistical example of the American standard of long term relationship failure already (see US divorce rates) and will do anything to keep the good that has been re-builit.
It is almost easier to have an "incident" so that there is something to attach the behavior to. Plain old just angry hanging in the air is like living in cloud of sulfur and you feel like your choice is risk the good or slap on a gas mask and live with it. Sometimes it is residual from an old pain. Sometimes it is from the pile of resentments that has been stacking up, a feeling of lack of respect. Sometimes it is a result of an inability to communicate properly in general, learned long ago and not realized till now. You can go to therapy. You can try to point out the obvious but the denial may be too strong and just anger them further. It may be better to let it pass, rebuild the basis of trust in the relationship. Let them be. It's all a crap shoot.
In the meantime, you are punished. You may deserve it. It's hard to tell since you aren't exactly sure about the specifics. Either way, its a lot easier to ignore the pain of the other person when you are on the controlling side because it means you have to lose the power the anger gives you and forgive, let it go. Most of us hold a grudge at some point unless, possibly, you have excellent communication skills and are schooled in self-analysis. I try to recognize it in me so that I don't have to be in unnecessary pain nor do I cause it. It doesn't always work because sometimes I don't even know I am angry till the writing is on the wall. And I may not be able to get rid of the cause of irritation, but I can chose to be happier in general and let it go when I do recognize it, if I can't. Forgive. Move on. Anger and hate are so close to each other and they both fester. Life can be so much better.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
Hide The Women And Children! The Hormones Have Crashed The Castle Walls!!!!
Our household has been declared a drama free zone more or less since the husband and I decided to reconcile the marriage and family unit. It is much better. We choose our words more carefully, consider the effect of them on others, try to consider how it feels in the other person's shoes. Which makes a hormone imbalance akin to a pipe bomb in a glass store.
In a good frothy tither, I have my husband accused falsely of not wanting to admit he is married on Facebook so he can replace me with a younger woman leaving me no choice but to divorce him and marry my last hope for security, an aging road hack who won't shut up about his time on Carson because who else would want me. It evolves into the husband not worrying about anything but himself himself himself because I am utterly unloveable, punishable for eternity for my past sins. I am old. Fat. Lopsided. There is a monologue of woe is me that makes my inner voice sound like it is locked in a Turkish prison. I am convinced that I am ugly and cling to my poor spouse for approval like a barnacle in heat. I pray that someone flirts with me to give me my self worth back. I just know I am going to leave this earth in poverty, shrouded in failure as a comic, writer, actor and lice killer. And seriously not funny. And I need to eat a cake. I wish that I could disappear. Only the gym can save others from my skewed logic because I know I can be calmed down using self-abuse aka the tread mill. And if I can't get to the gym....I shall.....die.
To be fair to myself, I ain't the only ball of chemicals in this apartment. In fact, not too many days ago I was sitting in a stew of nicotine withdrawal and moody tween that I could only defend myself from by curling up in the fetal position under the covers and pray that no one found the lump until the stench of emotions passed back into the gate of sanity. But I don't get points for my tolerance transferable to my weepy depressed moments, nor should I. Although I want to really really hard. It would be so much easier to feel like a victim, my go-to mood when there is too much of some hormone thing floating around in my brain.
The good thing about being this slightly less elastic age, is that I recognize the patterns. I still recall the first time I put two and two together, recognized that the onslaught of irrational anger and my body were tied together. I was working in a restaurant in NYC probably agitated already but not to the degree that warranted this feeling. I was fighting an urge not to throw something at another waiter. He just PISSED ME OFF. And I was thinking "Why the hell don't you all just LEAVE ME ALONE" which is generally not an option when working in the service industry. And, of course, "NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME!" And something in the the middle of my mental rant clicked. "Oh," I thought, "I'm in a mooooodddd." And it made it so much easier. This wasn't me. It was my body chemistry. I acknowledged my erratic mental state and asked people to keep their distance as much as it was possible until the path cleared. Then I went about my business, quietly bitching the whole time when my back was turned to anyone in my path staff or customer, praying that it wasn't entirely a waste of time being there by killing the tip opportunities with my foul angst.
Truth is, those hormone mood swings are nothing next to a really severe imbalance. I used to have a lesion in my temporal lobe and, post-surgery after it was removed, the parts in my head were so damaged that my husband was a little afraid to sleep next to me for fear of not making it through the night in tact. That was a different kind of insane. The monologue of logic that usually accompanied pms or too much testosterone was drowned out by red anger. I wasn't just pissed off. I was FURIOUS. There was still just enough of me going on to relinquish to the tiredness that accompanied it. Thank God. Eventually, my head healed but, at the time, it...and I ....was scary as hell. I hated everything and wanted relief by releasing the anger. No matter what was in my path. At that moment, I was bat shit crazy. I guess in retrospect, he earned a little nicotine withdrawal pissy-ness. At least he didn't threaten to stab me in my sleep.
Bodies do these things when they change. They adjust to different elements introduced into their make up, evening out the literal imbalance induced. We are machines as much as we are personalities. We have fluids that need balance, parts that need tune ups and electricity running the synapsis in our heads that occasionally blow sparks. Its easy to forget that when we deal with another human being. Sometimes, our parts just ain't running well. We forgive the car for needing an oil change. I will try to remember to give the cranky 50-ish lady who is flop sweating in the check out line at T.J.Maxx the same courtesy.
Image via MDanys/Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindaugasdanys/
In a good frothy tither, I have my husband accused falsely of not wanting to admit he is married on Facebook so he can replace me with a younger woman leaving me no choice but to divorce him and marry my last hope for security, an aging road hack who won't shut up about his time on Carson because who else would want me. It evolves into the husband not worrying about anything but himself himself himself because I am utterly unloveable, punishable for eternity for my past sins. I am old. Fat. Lopsided. There is a monologue of woe is me that makes my inner voice sound like it is locked in a Turkish prison. I am convinced that I am ugly and cling to my poor spouse for approval like a barnacle in heat. I pray that someone flirts with me to give me my self worth back. I just know I am going to leave this earth in poverty, shrouded in failure as a comic, writer, actor and lice killer. And seriously not funny. And I need to eat a cake. I wish that I could disappear. Only the gym can save others from my skewed logic because I know I can be calmed down using self-abuse aka the tread mill. And if I can't get to the gym....I shall.....die.
To be fair to myself, I ain't the only ball of chemicals in this apartment. In fact, not too many days ago I was sitting in a stew of nicotine withdrawal and moody tween that I could only defend myself from by curling up in the fetal position under the covers and pray that no one found the lump until the stench of emotions passed back into the gate of sanity. But I don't get points for my tolerance transferable to my weepy depressed moments, nor should I. Although I want to really really hard. It would be so much easier to feel like a victim, my go-to mood when there is too much of some hormone thing floating around in my brain.
The good thing about being this slightly less elastic age, is that I recognize the patterns. I still recall the first time I put two and two together, recognized that the onslaught of irrational anger and my body were tied together. I was working in a restaurant in NYC probably agitated already but not to the degree that warranted this feeling. I was fighting an urge not to throw something at another waiter. He just PISSED ME OFF. And I was thinking "Why the hell don't you all just LEAVE ME ALONE" which is generally not an option when working in the service industry. And, of course, "NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME!" And something in the the middle of my mental rant clicked. "Oh," I thought, "I'm in a mooooodddd." And it made it so much easier. This wasn't me. It was my body chemistry. I acknowledged my erratic mental state and asked people to keep their distance as much as it was possible until the path cleared. Then I went about my business, quietly bitching the whole time when my back was turned to anyone in my path staff or customer, praying that it wasn't entirely a waste of time being there by killing the tip opportunities with my foul angst.
Truth is, those hormone mood swings are nothing next to a really severe imbalance. I used to have a lesion in my temporal lobe and, post-surgery after it was removed, the parts in my head were so damaged that my husband was a little afraid to sleep next to me for fear of not making it through the night in tact. That was a different kind of insane. The monologue of logic that usually accompanied pms or too much testosterone was drowned out by red anger. I wasn't just pissed off. I was FURIOUS. There was still just enough of me going on to relinquish to the tiredness that accompanied it. Thank God. Eventually, my head healed but, at the time, it...and I ....was scary as hell. I hated everything and wanted relief by releasing the anger. No matter what was in my path. At that moment, I was bat shit crazy. I guess in retrospect, he earned a little nicotine withdrawal pissy-ness. At least he didn't threaten to stab me in my sleep.
Bodies do these things when they change. They adjust to different elements introduced into their make up, evening out the literal imbalance induced. We are machines as much as we are personalities. We have fluids that need balance, parts that need tune ups and electricity running the synapsis in our heads that occasionally blow sparks. Its easy to forget that when we deal with another human being. Sometimes, our parts just ain't running well. We forgive the car for needing an oil change. I will try to remember to give the cranky 50-ish lady who is flop sweating in the check out line at T.J.Maxx the same courtesy.
Image via MDanys/Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mindaugasdanys/
Monday, April 23, 2012
The Terminator
I don't tell people what my new line of work is very often. It takes a special kind of personality to be comfortable with it. The risk of the job over plays the practicality of income to them. The more I know and train, the safer I feel but some minds just can't wrap their brains around it. There are two types of people in my life now. The ones who get it, understands that this is an answer to the question of poverty that rules our world right now and see the necessity of the job in our society. And then ones that I don't tell because they won't let me in their house again if they knew.
I cannot tell you how much I love my new job, regardless of how others may feel about it. My need to hunt on a very very small scale is ingrained into my personality. I love to seek out, observe and discover. Years as a stand up comic has given me the training to navigate extreme situations, defuse high emotions. I hate defeat and am just obsessive enough to make sure that this does not happen. No one will get out alive on my watch. I know that I won't be able to sleep unless I make absolutely sure that I will not have to come back and rectify an error of sloppiness. My boss is a kind person and I do not wish to bring shame on her company.
It has to be done. Many try to handle it themselves. I am not inexpensive because I have the tools to be more thorough than the usual methods which are slowly becoming less effective. My eye is trained to see the issue at hand faster than most and I know how to assess the situation and eradicate the culprits in the most effective way.
I do not leave a mess for them to handle later, after the trauma has past. I will help them so that you will not be taken advantage of a second time by the same family of badness. I see the enemy and respect them for what they are. My job is left at my job. No traces come back with me because I understand the adversary and know how to keep them from coming home with me. But usually it is better to let people wonder what that big bag is for, why that lady is carrying an unmarked suitcase to the neighbor's house. Because a lot of times they just don't understand that this is a good job, a clean job. I know what I am doing.
I stop family's from suffering. I remove adversity from the world. I do what chemicals are failing to maintain as they become stronger and gain immunity. I am a Lice Terminator.
Not a lice public transit system. Please still let me into your house.
I cannot tell you how much I love my new job, regardless of how others may feel about it. My need to hunt on a very very small scale is ingrained into my personality. I love to seek out, observe and discover. Years as a stand up comic has given me the training to navigate extreme situations, defuse high emotions. I hate defeat and am just obsessive enough to make sure that this does not happen. No one will get out alive on my watch. I know that I won't be able to sleep unless I make absolutely sure that I will not have to come back and rectify an error of sloppiness. My boss is a kind person and I do not wish to bring shame on her company.
It has to be done. Many try to handle it themselves. I am not inexpensive because I have the tools to be more thorough than the usual methods which are slowly becoming less effective. My eye is trained to see the issue at hand faster than most and I know how to assess the situation and eradicate the culprits in the most effective way.
I do not leave a mess for them to handle later, after the trauma has past. I will help them so that you will not be taken advantage of a second time by the same family of badness. I see the enemy and respect them for what they are. My job is left at my job. No traces come back with me because I understand the adversary and know how to keep them from coming home with me. But usually it is better to let people wonder what that big bag is for, why that lady is carrying an unmarked suitcase to the neighbor's house. Because a lot of times they just don't understand that this is a good job, a clean job. I know what I am doing.
I stop family's from suffering. I remove adversity from the world. I do what chemicals are failing to maintain as they become stronger and gain immunity. I am a Lice Terminator.
Not a lice public transit system. Please still let me into your house.
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