Friday, November 09, 2007

angry, angry, angry

i have been blindsided by anger these past couple of weeks. absolutely blindsided. the murder of my girlfriends daughter by her husband awoke such violence within me. it gave me a face to hate. a face to channel my rage toward. that ugly, mouth-breathing, festering rot of a human being awoke a place in me that i really thought i had worked through. i did deep anger work a couple of years ago - and i'm not naive enough to believe that i wouldn't need to circle back, but dang this has spun me back so fast and so furiously that i can't seem to catch my breath.

i wrote to a blogger friend last night about some other issues i'm dealing with. i'm just going to quote it here because i am crunched for time today.

the deepest places in me want to be stuffed with food to make everything better. i know it's not better, ever with this stupid way of coping, but anything else just seems stupider. hurting and not doing anything about it seems senseless. at least anesthetizing the pain feels like i'm doing something...

i have been so angry and reactionary lately. i did some deep emotional work during the ignatian prayer class and realized that my mom gagged me twice in the bathroom. once because i ate baby aspirin and once because i ate maraschino cherries - both times out of the liquor cabinet - just a kitchen cupboard, but where they stored their booze - and both times because i was too old to take the nap she tried to make me take so she could pass out on the couch, i got bored and when she woke up and saw the empty jars she was ashamed/angry/scared and took it out on me by inducing vomiting with her nasty cigarette stained fingers as she me held over the toilet.

both of these times were right after the rape, in the same bathroom with the same exact motion. i realized that basically i was raped three times that summer, twice by the woman who was in such denial that she didn't protect me the first time and perpetrated it two more times. is it any wonder why feeling full is so important to me? empty means scary, lack of control and violated. full means safe.

damn.

i am so angry at her. and at my stupid father for not doing anything about it either, and for talking at his birthday party this summer about that very same party where i was raped with jokes and laughs about how drunk he was and how at the end of the party he and another guy ran down the road to the lake and jumped in and he lost the $200.00 my grandfather had just given him. i sat there and thought "old man, you lost way more than that that day" - he knew too. he knew i was raped that day. we have talked about it before. and then on my own birthday he never even bothered to call. i am so angry. so very angry.

sorry to unload on you, but i just have to get this junk out and now that i've started i just can't stop. i think i'll probably clip some of this into a blog post.

i just keep snapping at liam and the kids. i have no patience at all. i know i need to start therapy again. dang i hate winter. i can feel it creeping in on me already. i don't want to go outside because it's so cold and so i'd rather just isolate myself. i hate it.

i love this community and everything else is going so well. i just really need to get some closure on this junk i've mucked up. i can't do it on my own.
okay, now i have to go and get this day started. thanks for listening.

4 comments:

Sarah Louise said...

oh sending hugs, if that helps. I was pretty angry the other day and penned this on the back of a grocery list: "If you're angry and you need to break something, here is my heart."

(the inevitable question we ask each other, as we seek mental health) do you have someone you can talk to face to face about these things, what my father would call "a disinterested third party"?

Praying here.

Erin said...

I pray that in your anger... some tables get turned over.

Love you.

Stratoz said...

Can you try to imagine channeling that anger into positive action? a wise man once told me that if we can use 51% of the energy in ways other than being destructive to ourselves or others we win. I was in a bad state the other week and one of many things that pulled me out was realizing the gift that was given when my friends at church shook my hand and said, "Peace be with you."

May peace, joy, hope, and love flow into you.

Anonymous said...

wow... that's about all i can think of to say at this moment. i am so sorry that you were so badly treated as a child. but i admire you for facing it all and still trying to work through it. anger is hard... forgiveness is too... and fitting God into the equation makes it that much more difficult.

thanks for the courage to share your story
judi