Anger Management, Weakly

I'm feeling good, what can I say?

Have I given in to my inner wimp? For some reason, the past few weeks have been a walk in the park for me, a day at the beach. A skip to my lou, if you will.

You need to understand... it's not like there's been a moratorium on emotion-producing-events of late. No, they come, and as fast and as furious as car movie sequels, too. What has changed is me. My inner spring has become uncoiled... my trigger has become uncocked. When I walk down the street my hands are relaxed and swinging, not tensed into fists of destruction.

In the past, my first instinct when verbally assaulted by some stranger has usually been to mentally coil for attack, and to follow with an intense barrage of rapid-fire epithets. If that weren't enough to hold them at bay I would be forced to launch myself at them like the holy retribution of Jesus, raining down on them with a hail of fistfire. And soon after I would be escorted to a nice barred cell, and shortly thereafter to a bland courtroom where nobody understands the meaning of 'He Started It!'  

That is a thing of the past, my friends. I am all about the bonding now.

There's a soft, squishy chocolate center where my hard candy used to be. I can't say I understand how a transition like this could happen in such short order-- I'd have trouble believing it was my year of 2-hour-a-week anger management class, because change is tough and would take more than an obligatory court-ordered meeting-- but I really don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. Yuch-- whoever came up with that expression has NOT done it!

Other changes I have noticed in the last few months: 

I cry freely, which is a talent I never knew I had. But for some reason I don't cry about unhappy things... when my folks died, for example, I didn't so much as well up or build a shine on my eyes! I DID feel a profound sense of loss at their passing, and my heart aches when I remember things we can no longer share, but I feel warm and glowy when I remember them. I guess I'm remembering their lives, not their deaths. 

No, I seem to cry at happy endings-- when the guy gets the girl, or when the hero beats the villain, or when things just work out for the best-- I'm a sobby Bobby! And man, it feels good to cry. It's like an emotional spigot opening up and letting all those tough emotions drain out of me. When I'm done, all that's left are the happy ones.

Little things are less important... a LOT less important. So apparently I don't sweat the petty stuff. I remember steaming up whenever my daughter made a life decision which I felt was not in her best interest. I'd start yelling, then she'd start yelling and becoming defensive, then she'd storm off and nothing would get resolved. She'd make her bad choices anyway and have to live with them, which is something she wouldn't have had to do, if I felt then more like I do now. She still makes bad choices and has to live with them, only now we get to quietly discuss the consequences before she does them, so she can make her decision unemotionally. That's why she doesn't have a skull tattoo on her face. 

I steer clear of trouble-- that's another new thing in my life. In the past, if there was even so much as a whisper of anything exciting going on, I'd find a way to be there... even if it meant missing classes, missing work, or missing a family event.  You might guess that had a negative effect on school, work and family, and you'd be right. After a number of failed classes, lost jobs and ruined relationships, it became much less of an appealing draw. I began to like the idea of long-term-- long-term anything was better than having to find new all the time. Boy oh boy how my perspective has changed! In my youth it was always about the new and exciting... now I'm thrilled when they can cook my burger the same way each time.

You know, maybe it's maturity. Maybe I'm just growing up a little, and the things which were fun and interesting to me when I was younger no longer have the same appeal.

Okay, I think I've got it. I'm claiming Murtaugh syndrome.  You remember Sgt Roger Murtaugh, played by Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon series of movies? Here he was, a month from retirement, and he was saddled with an insane partner, who would stop at nothing to get the man. Of course wherever Riggs went, Murtaugh had to go... whether it be jumping from a rooftop or falling out of a plane. 

So I feel like Murtaugh. After each crazy stunt Riggs gets away with, the exhausted and time-worn Murtaugh would issue his famous tagline:

 I'm getting to old for this shit!

And so I am. Whether anger management helped or not I don't know, but I am neck deep in 'I don't wanna put up with this shit anymore' and the only recourse seems to be an ego deflation. Yeah. People who get into arguments and fist fights are defending something-- whether it be their knowledge, their honor or the honor of another, and these are learned behaviors which can be reasoned away.

Well, they can for me, anyway. I suppose there's a great amount of power in the thought, "I AM SICK OF THIS." When I say that, I have just told myself that I am not going to do this anymore.

I have come to a decision. That final thought, the last piece of straw on the pile, has to be meaningful enough that I feel as though a chapter in my life has finished. Like the alcoholic who wakes up in a puddle of his own sick, it has to have an impact. In effect, I have to blow a hole in my own ego, to allow help from outside to enter past the defense zone.

Oh!

I guess anger management DID help after all... after I finally knocked my own ego down and let them in!