applepie

So, I was looking over some of the discussion topics and I started to read the thread about what no one sees in you. This got me to thinking since I always have this impression that almost no one really sees me for me. In some ways even the people closest to me choose to ignore aspects of my personality that don't fit their ideal image. For me it is my anger that is ignored. I am constantly in a rage. I can't remember the last time that I had time to myself that I wasn't thinking aobut how angry I am. Sometimes, often actually, I don't even know why I'm so volatile. I just seem to have this rage that is always there and never giving me more than a moments peace. I have brief blocks of time after a argument or some other emotional blood letting that I feel almost normal, but the anger always comes to the surface again. It is bad enough that I have considered seeing a professional to get some help on containing this rage.

When I was a child we went to therapy for a while as a family. My parents, my sister, and myself. Mostly it was to help my sister work through her issues of thinking that my parents didn't approve of anything she did and were never supporting her. Oddly, now they support both my sister and my niece and anything they do still isn't good enough. But, I digress... it dawned on me about this time that I had this core of anger and hate, but I was never offered any aid in dealing with it. All that I was told is that I have a tendency to bottle my more violent emotions, which there are plenty of since even as a young child I had a terrible temper, and that this is why I seem so full of anger. Rather than being prone to the tempermental bursts I experienced when really young I just kept it all in and had a really bad outburst once in a while. Then I got a pat on the head and told "you should work on that". I don't know what sort of aid that was for me, but as I said we weren't there for me.

Now jump to the present more than twelve years after the fact and I'm still angry at the world. All I've learned is that it is there and it is one of my main driving forces in life. My anger pushes me to finish school, when I hate my major in business, just to prove that I didn't throw away my life like so many people assumed. It makes me competative and never willing to give over an argument to anyone. As I'm sure my husband will admit, it makes me a very difficult person to live with. This is especially true when you never know if I'm going to wake up in a rage that day for no real reason. The only two people in this world safe from the worst of my anger are my children. They seem to be my saving grace in life. The only two things that can draw me back from the brink with a look and a touch. They are also one of my biggest sources of fear. Especially my son. As he grows and comes more and more into his own personality I notice that he is able to provoke my anger so easily and he does it quite delibrately. My daughter is too young to be much trouble in this department yet, but in her I see shadows of myself as a baby and possibly a child. I can hope she will not have this deep well of anger, but I think she has the same temper that built mine long ago.

Which brings me back to my original point above of finding professional help. I worry that the day will come when my rage will spill uncontrolably onto my children with little warning. I worry that I'm going to teach my daughter to crush her temper into submission by allowing it no free reign and in turn build the same angry foundation that I hate to have or that I will crush my son's stubborn spirit in a fit of temper. I worry that if I don't get help soon it will be far to late to come back from this person I've turned into and other times I worry it is already too many years late to save myself. It leaves me wondering if more than 15 years of anger trapped within can even be released a vanquished once and for all. I feel that the time has come to finally look into some aid or I will risk missing any chance that I have of returning to the much happier (but still tempermental) person I was as a young child. Who do you trust with your deepest buried secrets, though? I don't trust a therapist, the last one failed. Most of the people around me refuse to see that I really need help, so I'm left trying to determine where to turn for "professional" help to tame this beast. Maybe I don't even need help and if I could find the time to practice some for of art or even my martial arts training again on a regular basis I could return to the control, if not peace, that I once enjoyed.