Intro: I’m living at my mom’s house until my new apartment is available in 3 weeks. This is going to be a long 3 weeks.
I punched a door today.
I punched it 12 times, hard.
It cracked.
Its a solid wood door, and I shivered it with my fist. Felt damn good too. A couple of bloody knuckles was worth finding out how I was feeling.
Yes, I mean that. Its not figurative. I’d just retreated, baffled by my annoyance, and had decided to ‘forget about it’ and move on with other things. Then I asked myself: “What is it that I’m feeling?”, and WHAM……WHAM.WHAM.WHAM……WHAM.
“Oh.”
I tell you, I wouldn’t want to be friends with me right now. I’d be scared of that inner rage, pain, snarled je ne sais qua that is hiding from its owner. When is that going to pop out on me?
And I don’t mean that figuratively either. I let go of one friend for just this reason. He started to frighten me with his potential boom. It leaked out when I disappointed him, and I saw how big the bottle was that held that genie’s fist.
I don’t want to be around that kind of threat. But I suppose that many people have both the capacity and some content to the rage bottle. Hmm. Well, I can’t un-befriend myself, nor would I want to, so I’ll just have to deal with it and hope I can understand.
……
Backing up, the flying fists of Growing Freedom were prompted by an incident with my mother. I’d been to my therapist earlier in the day, and was feeling pretty good. Hopeful even. I felt a bit closer to taking that big next step and really trusting the guy with my shamed and hidden inner core, wherein coexist both my greatest and truest self, and also my most irrational and defended false beliefs or ‘working models’ of the world.
I was just going to watch the Champions League Semi-Final with Man U. and Barcalona when she came home from martyr duty. I’ve started to think of all her projects as martyr duty. She slaves away for everyone else and has piss poor relationships with her flesh and blood. I understand her motivations though in the ‘free labor’ department. I unfortunately inherited them. Though thankfully I’ve become somewhat aware of what its all about, and am less prone to scurrying around ‘helping’ everyone.
So, she comes home, and this:
Mom: “Any messages for me?” (slightly annoyed look on her face)
Me: “No, I just got home as well. Maybe on the phone, but I’ve not checked. What have you been up to?” (genuinely interested in finding out how she’s doing, letting her vent if need be, so that it doesn’t come out sideways….on me)
Mom: “I was painting all morning for Friend X” (looking more the martyr part I know she loves, but also looking more annoyed in general)
Me: “Wow, well, I’m just getting some lunch here….”
Mom: “I’m off to more martyr duty (church this time) in a bit….”
Mom: “By the way…” (oh shit, that is never good)
Mom: “You owe me BIG time. I had to take out the recycling this morning”.
Me: “Sorry about that. I got home too late from my own martyr duty to get it done” (I was helping a friend with stream data gathering)
Mom: silence. She neither acknowledges my reply, nor offers a way for me to repay this BIG debt. Right, whatever. She doesn’t want resolution, she wants to covet her anger and lord it around as a reason to be a bitch. As if martyring herself isn’t enough. Well, of course it isn’t, because shame isn’t healed by becoming a busy body do-gooder. And it certainly isn’t healed by relishing superiority over others, which is what her brand of martyrdom is all about.
Me: angry
……..
Yeah, a nothing scene. I know. I thought so too, but man was I angry! I still am to some degree.
I came up with a tongue in cheek saying today for therapy patients with mommy issues: “Well, at least I know I’ll always have her disapproval”.
Anger. Hmm. Does it always cover pain, or is it a primary? Does it always mean that we want something to be different?
I started to ask myself these questions. I went and drove out to a beatiful pond in Hunt Valley, MD. I took my journal, but I just sat there thinking, listening to the red winged blackbirds, cardinals, catbirds, and buzzing bees. So what is it that want, that my anger is about?
I want to be respected, not used as a garbage bin, not bullied to relieve a parent’s own insecurities and fears. I want to have a parent that I can share my weakness with, and not just guard against.
But I don’t have parents like that.
I never did.
So why do I not move on? Why wish for something that is never going to happen. Each of my parents has demonstrated again and again that they are not good trust objects.
But this wounding cycle continues, and I know that I must live through it and not run from it if I’m ever to find and keep better relationships, good relationships, enduring and flowering relationships. The anger clouds keep me from understanding what they are hiding. I cannot lash out. Well, I can, but that just rachets things up, and if I leave them with anger, I don’t think I’ll be able to really move on in spirit.
If you abandon a baby in refuse dump full of predators, that’s child abuse, right?
If you bully a baby with fists and feet, that’s abuse, right?
But what if you do these things to your child with words and perpetual pressures, anger and threats?
What if you abandon someone in spirit, but remain in body? Manipulate by witholding from them their most basic needs, in order to satisfy your insecure need for power and control?
In the end I do not think there is too much difference. Physical wounds may be healable, or they may be fatal. Wounds to the spirit, mind, and emotional development of a person are just as greivous.
How many teenagers kill themselves, or abandon themselves to complete irresponsibility in lieu of death? Do you really think that these young people are the murderers of themselves?
How many people are free of neuroses, and can live their lives steering by passion, caution, will, calling, belief, and love? And aren’t the others, those trapped by history and caged by normalization, like lemmings over the cliffs of their own lives?
………
I know I can find out. I can uncover the broken pieces of my inner world and make a mural such as the world has never seen. I feel the sparks of that potential future falling back through time.
There is a time to hold on, and a time to let go, and though the waves are wrecking further the shattered pieces of what I thought I had, it is time to cast off and swim for it. Maybe I’ll ride a friendly shark to shore, or find a lighthouse beyond.
