Seeing Red and Nattering On

This isn’t the post I originally wanted to write.  The other one was written from a place of rage and would have ended up being a two thousand word rant about my hatred of a certain group of people.  Don’t worry, it was aimed at a demographic, not a race or anything.  Sounds like fun, I know.  But I don’t want this blog to be a sounding board for every whining whim that strikes my fancy.  There are already hints of that in most posts as they are based on my opinions and thoughts, not grounded in any kind of reality.  It’s not the kind of page you visit to learn how to fix your computer server or how to get girls.  For what it’s worth, my answers on those topics are a) I have no idea, try using google and b) have a sense of humour and don’t use the suggestions from google, they are weird and scary and will probably get you arrested.

When I was a child my mom always told me that hate was too strong of a word.  Come to think of it, she still tells me that.  I was to use the phrase, “I don’t like this” in regards to whatever it was that I claimed to hate.  Jenny also tries to get me to do the same thing, although the phrasing is, “I don’t love this”.  It comes from the idea that your brain breaks things down into simpler ideas and doesn’t recognize the “don’t” part of it.  To say you hate something reinforces your hatred.  To say you don’t love something means your brain only recognizes the love part and tries to keep you in a positive state of mind.  At least that’s my dime store psychology take on it.  It makes sense I suppose. 

I have a temper.  A bad one.  Most people don’t know this.  Many of my angry reactions are based in fear and anxiety but often I can look like a hostile, arrogant prick.  I don’t think that’s a healthy way to live and I’m working on it.  My anger issues are far less than they were before meeting my wife.  In our marriage we work on communication and relaying feelings.  I have a hard time with that as, for most of my adult life, I was under the impression that the only feelings I should have were happy, angry and hungry.  Anything else ended up under one of those three headings.  Yet again, very unhealthy.  Much of my hostility and judgement rears itself in situations where I’m in unfamiliar territory.  This could be literal like when we were in China or first moved to Vancouver.  It also refers to the metaphorical, such as being angry that I learned it’s OK to feel feelings and being mad at the unfamiliarity of crying from sorrow or feeling sympathetic.  Being able to expand into other emotional ranges has been revelatory and frustrating which I suppose is a short tag line for life.  I’m learning to live and it’s weird and beautiful.

Despite all the personal growth, I still have anger and I probably always will.  I’m learning to recognize it and manage it.  Fury still sneaks up on me but I’m getting better at catching myself before I spiral into full on rage.  Also, Jenny points it out which is both infuriating and incredibly helpful.  I don’t want to be an angry person but I still want to be able to get angry.  Used appropriately, I feel anger has value.

My original post was written because I was angry with something that transpired between myself and my downstairs neighbour.  I won’t go into details right now but the gist is that we lead very different lifestyles and are butting heads.  The biggest striking points are noise issues and smoking in the house.  There is to be none at all on the property, yet we can smell pot smoke wafting up through the heating ducts.   I’m not against smoking pot and, though cigarettes disgust me to the Nth degree, people can do what they want.  What I am against is having to deal with it in my house when neither of us smokes and, I repeat, there is to be no smoking on the property.  A complaint was made to our landlord and he (our neighbour) responded by banging on our door and screaming at me when I answered it.  After burping out his tirade, he stormed off and I stood there feeling the Red come on.

Yep.  Rage.  Pure, glorious, sweet, red rage.  All directed right at him.  Also, I was a little bit angry at myself because I was stuck holding Rowan under my arm when I answered the door and held her during his angry rant.  I did not come across as tough at all.  Plus I wasn’t wearing shoes.  It hard to be tough with no shoes on.

I had my fury and savoured it.  I can’t remember the last time I felt it so strong.  I ranted and stewed.  I made hummus (obviously yet another tough guy thing to do) but while making it I imagined all sorts of terribly violent and incredibly satisfying deaths for him.  All at my hands of course.  I pondered the idea of going down there and having my own shout.  Fire seemed like a good idea at the time too.  Perhaps I could go shout at him with a burning torch in my hand, waving the flame around to punctuate every good point I made.  In the grasp of this fury I felt the urge to write and started in on my own scathing rant to the universe.  My hands were shaking and I was swearing in  my mind and agreeing with every single hate filled word I wrote and it felt so good.

And then it didn’t.

Between then and now I talked with my parents (who we happened to be on the phone with when our neighbour decided to pay us a visit), had a discussion with Jenny (about anger and what we’re going to do about our living situation) and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror (playing out all sorts of fantasies in my head).  By the time I came back to the computer, I was all raged out.  Just the usual atmospheric anger was present and that’s a bubbling brew I can handle.  I’m almost over the surge of adrenalin from the encounter.  My stomach is still rolling (hummus doesn’t help quell a fury stomachache) but my hands and feet have stopped moving of their own accord.  Now I don’t care about him.

Well, that’s not true.   I do care about this.  Obviously I do.  He is impacting our life in our new place and that has to be dealt with.  Now, in a calmer state, I can deal with it in a manner that doesn’t involve fire or swords.  Don’t get me wrong, I still kind of want to go the fire and swords route.  I have issues with people of his type and had actually written a letter at the bottom of this post directed at the people like him who seem to be everywhere now.  I removed it but didn’t delete it.  It’s being saved for another day and when I do release it, it’s not going to be from reactionary anger.  It’ll be because I’m tired with what’s been going on in society and feel the need to voice my opinion.  That in itself is a small victory for myself.  Once upon a time I couldn’t wait to unleash tirades and espouse my point all over the place.  Now I don’t care all that much.

I’m not sure how to end all this.  Much like my rage from last night, the thoughts for this post have gradually washed away.  I don’t want to dwell on it anymore.  That was yesterday and this is today.  I woke up and went out to do some wandering.  I found an awesome used book store just down the street.  Around the corner there’s an Italian deli where I can get all sorts of delicious sandwich meats and cheeses.  The sky is blue and I can see the mountains from the table where I’m typing this.  Already the good things about Kelowna far outweigh the bad.  It’s been a trying week but that’s OK.  My lingering frustration here will eventually disappear because there are too many positive things going on in my life.

I wish I had something profound to finish off with.  I’m striking while this iron is fairly cold but I’ve got another one running hot in the back of my mind.  I suppose that’s appropriate.  Much like anger, inspiration seems to flare up and needs to be addressed then and there.  My anger is gone for now, replaced with a calm optimism but I still want to keep thinking about the situation that caused it.  My angry rant post has faded and now I’m just dragging it out, trying to keep it going in the hopes of finding the proper resolution but I don’t think there will be one.  One of the posts I’ve been considering writing is on the topic of letting go.  I think that might be the wise thing to do here.

So long anger, so long rant.

On to more positive waters.