Anger, again.

And so I cannot really escape the anger, even when I truly wish to.

This time I didn't build anything with it except a good head of steam to power a full on charge.  I chose not to wrap it around me and fend things off.  I chose to push it out.  Not a better approach.

I need to learn to control this.

While it may seem as if being angry when you feel wronged is a natural state,  it doesn't help anything and can be destructive.  It should not be the logical conclusion to feeling attacked.  Anger fuels the pain, and the hurt and it stops me from seeing how my anger is creating pain in other people.  It stops me from checking to make certain that there really is something to be upset about.  

I need to learn to control it.

I want to be the person I feel I am inside.  The person that peeks out when things are smiley and calm and when I don't feel small and insecure.  I want to learn to love so much that I can accept things that would make me angry now.  I need to learn to examine the issue, look at the people involved, apply empathy and understanding before I leap to defend myself against attacks that are not there.  Anger is not a defence or a coping mechanism.  It's often the cause of the pain, at the very least it exacerbates it.  

I used to be better at this.  I used to understand my brain better.  I used to be able to see around things and through things that didn't matter.  Issues used to be more transparent.  

Somewhere along the way I lost my ability to reason through things.  I think it has something to do with the fact that I was learning to care more about myself, to love myself more and I took that too far.  I made things about me that shouldn't have been.  I didn't have the balance I needed.

I really don't know why.  

When is it okay to have something hurt, and when isn't it?  Why should things hurt?  How do you know when you should own something that has gone wrong or when it isn't yours to own?

Why do I feel like I own so much?  What is mine to own and what isn't?  What am I going to do about that?

Questions to be answered.  Paths to find. 

Exposure

I thought that I was operating on a relatively high moral plane.

I truly wasn't.  

For the most part it seemed as if I was.  I was capable of doing so with regard to the bits that were easy and that were not challenging my sense of self.  I wasn't for the bits that triggered my insecurities.  Which means, of course, that I wasn't really up there.  I saw myself there, but when I looked at it closely I know that I knew that it was camouflage.  I was a façade.  I saw that and didn't act.  I was too complacent, too selfish.  And then the wall fell.

My parenting, my ability to be a friend, my self-image have all been shaken and laid bare.  I have been found wanting.  I have found myself wanting, and it has cut me to the core.  Ending a fifteen year long relationship causes stress.  I didn't react well to that stress.  I took everything I had built and blew it up.  My anger belied my integrity and I retreated to the self preserving core that I have always seen but never really taken the time to examine.  It is more than that though.  I have always been wanting.  I have left holes and made mistakes that it will take a long time to fill and fix.  I hurt people.  

I am not writing this for you.  This is about me. This is not for you.  I need to get this out of me.   I need to stop and look around and see what I have done and what I have left undone.  I can't dwell on what was, or what should have been.  I have to get this out and keep it out and walk around it poking into it to turn it all over and aerate the core.  I need this to decompose.  It's my own kind of therapy; an open diary.

Divulging all of this rawness in a global forum makes me uncomfortable.  I should be uncomfortable.   I want to change.  I need to change; to evolve, even.   I need to not do things the way I have done them in the past.  I need to not tuck this into the layers and fold it into myself.   I don't know if this is the right way to do this, it can't be worse than doing nothing.  

Small People

"Let's Dance, Fiona!"

In the supermarket, right in front of the checkout.  Four year olds can make me do things I would never do otherwise.  Like dance to bad 80s throwbacks in public...  Very much in public.

"Let's Run up the Stairs!"

Actually, this one took no convincing whatsoever.  I felt like running up the stairs.  And down them again.  I almost tried to convince them they had to go to the washroom again just so we could chase each other up and down, again.   Sadly, I am more responsible and not quite as silly as some people believe.  Not sadly, I meant, just yeah, I am responsible.  Yep, yep, yep.

"Tell me a Story."

... about a mouse;
... about when you were four;
... about when E was a baby;
... about when A was a baby;
... about when you were twelve;
... about monsters on the moon;
... about whatever you want.

"You love me because I make you laugh."
"I love you because you are silly."

"Where are you ticklish?" (Note to all of you, if you tell this to four year olds they will remember, and they will figure it out.)

What is important is what small people know.

Be yourself, no matter where you are.
Move.  Run.  Keep going.
Share your stories.
Love is mine (and yours) to have and to give
Laugh.

H is for Hysterectomy (and Hormone Replacement Therapy?)

So, I am still here.  (Obvious to those of you who actually read this, I have posted three times since my surgery, already.)

Three weeks to the day.

I have had very little bleeding.  In fact I have bled less in this three week period than I have since sometime around the end of July 2015.  Significantly less.  Less still than I had prior to and during that exciting March Break event not so very long ago and for a very long time afterwards.

It's over, my battle with my uterus.  I won by losing it...  (HAH, clearly I couldn't resist.)

Reading the potential side effects on this side of the operating theatre fills me with more trepidation than it did prior to the surgery.  I think that is reasonable, don't you?

I already know what hormone fluctuations can feel like.  How could I have avoided buying a vowel in that puzzle with what was going on before?    This time around I am running on a low tank, not on high octane.  It feels different, not certain if that is good or bad.  It's only been three weeks.

I would like to blame my faults and irrational behaviours on hormones.  I just think that my brain is stronger than that.  That's on me.  The rest of the possible side effects...  Yay!  I may grow a beard and become even more dwarf like...  So, um, yeah...

Charts like this, don't help:

http://www.hersfoundation.com/effects.html#Anchor-Chart-47857


The internet is not a good place to go looking for reassurance about your medical issues.  I am not reading any more on the internet about the side effects of anything.  Not even of chewing gum whilst walking in the rain.

I will see what comes next.   If anything does I have the joy of potentially looking forward to Hormone Replacement Therapy for dealing with the fallout caused by a hysterectomy.  There isn't any way to counter bleeding to death; not that I know of, anyhow.  So in that regard I at least have the more propitious side effects hiding behind the curtain.

To anyone out there who happens to be considering this surgery I offer no advice or counsel.  I would not have listened to you either.

I made an informed decision and I am well aware of what may or may not happen afterwards.  I have some control over the consequences of this surgery.  I had no control over my uterus, it held me hostage and hijacked my peace of mind.  I was worried about me, about dying in front of my kids, about dying in front of my friends, about making myself an emergency and having other people have to deal with it, about never being able to relax and just swim in a lake without wondering if I would bleed everywhere when I came out, about bleeding on people's chairs, couches, passenger seats...

This is better.

All apologies

What else should I be? ...

What else should I say? ...

I suck at apologies.

I thought that when I explained the how and why and said that I was wrong, that was better than saying I was sorry.   I thought that the apology would be tacit.  What it was was insouciant.   I believed that it was better that way. What I didn't see what that the how, why and admission are about me, the apology is about the person I wronged.

It's more than regrettable that I have taken so long to wake up to this.  It's asinine.  It's not like I haven't been told that I was behaving selfishly about apologizing.  I am also not stupid, parts of me are, but my brain isn't.

Not apologizing when you know you are wrong, even if you have tried to explain how you feel and why you did what you did, is ignorant.   Apologizing when you mean it is important.   The apology won't fix what you did.  I used to think that I didn't apologize because I didn't want to be forgiven.  I was equating the apology to me fixing things, not to me relating how I felt and showing my shame.  If you want to fix what you did, you have to make it right.  To learn and to understand and to think beyond the wrong.  You may not be able to fix the thing you did.  You can fix yourself.  If you are fortunate, the person or people you wronged will give you the chance to show them how you have done so.

Why blog about all of this, lately?

I make mistakes.  I make big mistakes.  I don't want to hide this from myself.  I started this blog years ago to not hide.  I didn't get far enough.  I have to leap farther.

I can fix this, in me.  I can look around and see what else there is to fix as well.  Taking your vehicle in to get new tires, knowing that you also need a new suspension and then cursing the new tires afterwards because you are still bouncing around like a rubber ball is pointless.

Desperation

I did something very wrong recently.  It could have been disastrous.

I then compounded the damage by not apologizing properly.  I was truly and completely sorry, but I didn't say that.   I was too busy trying to build myself back up I didn't see who I was knocking down.  It didn't end there.  I started to panic and I shut myself down.  I just kept fucking up.  No censorship.  If you are a kid and you are reading this you know this word already.  And I mean it; I fucked up. Repeatedly.

I was feeling unloved and unworthy and I was neither of those things.  I was flat out wrong.  I found the anger and fear and insecurity I have never let go of and I wrapped myself so thick in it that I blinded myself to who I really am. To what I really am, and to what I was to people. I put it on like an old, worn-soft flannel shirt and decided that is what I was to to wear.  I  threw myself back.  I should have seen it coming.  I think maybe I did see it coming and didn't let myself find my anchor and use it.  I was desperate to be seen differently; to be seen as better than I was, to deny the ugly parts of me.

I am stubborn.  It's more than that, I am obdurate.  I saw what I wanted to.  I was heading in the right direction and I let my emotions drag me off into the dark.  I didn't listen to my brain.  It's a pretty good brain, too.  I didn't listen to the people who loved me.  I didn't let myself.  They loved and supported me and tried to shake me out of it.  I didn't let them even when all the love was starting to sink in and feel right.  I was believing I was loved and could be loved.  Then I let everything that was bothering me build up and overwhelm "me".  I let myself fall into a hole.  Then I dug it deeper.  My emotions hijacked my reason.   I just lost it.  My reason and my sense of justice.  My morality and my integrity.  MY INTEGRITY.  All of it. 

Not so very deep down I knew my behaviour was wrong.  I didn't see how it was wrong, how wrong it it was. Stupid. Foolish. Dangerous.  Selfish.

I know that I am worthy of being loved.  I was loved.  I deserved that.   I am loved.  I deserve it.  Even the ugly bits.  It's okay to have ugly bits.  It's all me.  I can be pretty Awesome.  

I take responsibility for my stupidity, my selfishness and stubbornness.  I will work to not devalue or debase myself again.  I am worth too much to do that to myself.

I will fix this.  It's mine to fix.  I own this.

I Have Built Armour out of Anger

I have, recently, built armour that is thick, strong and hot.  Deeply forged it enveloped me in a layer of protection so effective that anything aimed at it either was absorbed, shattered, or dissipated.  That is what I thought it was doing.  I was wrong.

It kept Things out.  It was also somewhat self sustaining; it required little fuel.

It wore me down and I found myself dwelling in the rawness of my core.

It was spurious; anger is not armour.  It eats at you and chews you up if you don't shed it.  If you don't at least see it and acknowledge the truth of what it is and where it came from.  Anger is corrosive.


Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Mark Twain