When I get angry, I sometimes lose myself. I mean, not literally, but I forget the person I want to be, the person I try to be. My personality morphs from sunny to dark and ugly. I grew up in a house where everyone screamed and fought all the time and these childhood norms may have predisposed me to a certain darkness in my soul.
This anger is self destructive and the person who pissed me off probably forgot about it almost immediately while I focused and obsessed over it for hours (or days).
Yesterday, I had a blow out with a colleague at work and it ruined my day. Angry as hell, I talked a lot of shit to whoever would listen. I tossed and turned all night. I cried bitter tears. When I woke up in the morning I still felt miserable. My head hurt, my feet hurt, and I stood in the shower with the water pounding on my face.
I got to work and the negativity continued. That's the thing, when you are miserable and angry, people pick up on it. Even an afternoon off did not lift my ugly mood. I felt like a dark cloud hung over my head wherever I walked, no matter now sunny it was outside.
Perhaps a pedicure, I thought to myself. It didn't help. The guy was too rough and the dry callused soles of my feet were too tender. Afterward, I limped into the Dollar Tree to buy some jelly, bread, a pregnancy test (a story for another blog) and wheat crackers. At the last minute, I saw a lavender face mask and threw it in my cart to cleanse some of my bitterness out of my pores.
When I got home, it was already three-thirty. I walked in the house and the moms were sitting on the couch. I threw the mail on the table and called Frodo and Chewie upstairs with me. I put on the mask, ran a bath and opened my Kindle to finish a memoir called "Made for You and Me" by Caitlin Shetterly. The memoir is about her and her husband's struggle to make it through the recession in a new city with a brand new baby. In the end, they ended up moving home with her mom. It felt a bit too close for comfort, but her voice got into my head and her anxiety lessened mine.
That's why I love memoir. Her story made me feel less bleak and reminded me that it can always get worse. Yes, I have our two moms in the house, but we have plenty of room and both have good jobs.
Fast forward to tonight, Adrian stayed late at dinner with his business partner and I blew up again. I had good reason mind you. We are getting our taxes done tomorrow and when I saw the W2s, I freaked out. In undergrad, I did people's taxes (longhand before the age of TurboTax) and know the tax brackets. I was worried we hadn't withheld enough. And, Adrian is a 1099er so I had to shift through a box of his receipts for more than three hours as I cussed him out silently to myself. Well maybe not always silently because I might have said the word asshole aloud once or twice much to his mother's chagrin. Don't worry dear reader, I made sure to tell her, "Not you Orieta, Adrian, tu hijo."
When Adrian waltzed in at nine, I was upstairs in bed on the last page of my book. I started screaming at him and he walked out of the bedroom toward his usual safe haven of Black Ops. For some reason as I watched his back, I wasn't angry anymore and I called him back in and said, "Shit babe, you should have stayed home tonight to go through those fucking receipts. But fuck it, come to bed"
He did. Thank goodness he is easily pleased. And, in the end, it was nicer to go to bed happy rather than angry again. Plus, there is nothing closer to pure bliss than laying in bed with my fluffy comforter, a dog on each side and my husband's hand in mine.
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