Eccentric Flower:200002/Rage and Omens II

So I'm having a little trouble with anger lately. You got a problem with that?

Prolonged anger was and is uncharacteristic for me. The question is what "prolonged" means. I still can't stay in a high rage for more than five or ten minutes, but the question is not duration; it's frequency. When I look at the record and realize that I'm getting angry several times a day, as opposed to maybe once a week at most, I realize something is wrong.

I can't think of any external causes, and I seriously doubt it's chemical. I'm inclined to go with what I call the Volcano Theory. That says I just have a certain amount of rage - call it a yearly quota - and if I don't let it out regularly in little harmless hisses of steam, eventually it erupts and causes big messes.

The problem is that my main outlet for rage - for letting off steam harmlessly - has effectively ceased to function. That's this space you're perusing right here.

I have always envisioned this journal as a place to rant about what was on my mind. It's never been strictly a chronicle of my life, nor was it intended to be. I'm glad that people find my rants interesting to read, but that's not especially germane - the purpose was to provide me with a steam valve.

So why make it public at all? Well, that's part of the release mechanism, unfortunately. It doesn't do for me to seethe over things privately. I have to go through the motions of telling someone, of explaining and thereby ridding myself of what eats me. It doesn't even matter whether there's an audience for real: I have to pretend there's one, like I'm telling a story, or it doesn't get rid of the acid buildup. Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, of the many bad emotions I want to get rid of, true blind rage is not one of the ones I can vent here. Recent weeks have been testimony to that. Because when I get in a rage, I rarely vent at the actual target of the rage. Indeed, it may be that one of the things which causes rage in the first place is an antagonist that I can't reach or do anything about - like the crowds at the wine expo in the previous entry. Rage, I think, depends a little on helplessness.

So instead, when I get in a rage, I fire at whoever or whatever happens to be in range. Nonelvis, sometimes, or Marc, or anyone else who's around me, or friends-by-correspondence who happen to be in topical proximity to what's eating me. And sometimes there's something that enrages me, but I can't fire on that for various political reasons, so I fire on the person for something unrelated. But I must vent at any cost, when it happens. Rage is bad. Rage will kill you.

Sometimes the rage is really about the person who's catching fire. The rage isn't reasonable or justified, not usually, and I don't mean what I say, and I repent it later. But none of that helps much if you're on the business end of my sharp tongue. Even if, for once, you happened to deserve it.

So you'd think it would be better to keep silent. No. I value my own stomach lining more than my friends'. Ultimately, I'd rather upset and possibly lose my friends than try to store the rage inside me. (Nonelvis, I think, tries to do it the other way - sometimes I wish she'd just haul off and scream at me. About anything.)

Of course, ideally, I'd rather find a way to vent the rage without damaging myself or offending my friends. But the vast majority of my friends read these pages. Which means I can't vent my rage here if they happen to be the targets-at-hand. They wouldn't understand, and I can't blame them.

I can't rant privately - as I said, that doesn't do the trick. I've tried. And I can't even always figure out what the rage is really about, so that I can vent on that instead of using straw men.

So I'm up a tree.

I suppose I could put all my rage fits as parables, tell them as if they're stories. In which case, I have to do a better job of shaving off the identifying marks. It wouldn't do to have anyone recognize themselves in one of those stories.

That seems like a lot of work. What my brain really wants is the ability to just spout off about anyone and have them magically know whether I mean it or whether I'm just being enraged.

But you're not telepaths, and sometimes the line is blurry anyway. Just like I'm seldom in a rage for more than ten minutes, I'm seldom genuinely mad at anyone for more than ten minutes. Usually, once it passes, I'm not mad at you any more. The wound is over with once I've vented. Done. Cancelled.

But during those ten minutes, not even I can tell you to what extent my hatred is genuine.

I hate my rages.

I hate them because they cause me trouble if I vent them and trouble if I don't. I hate them because they're something I inherited from my father, and that automatically makes them suspect. I hate them because I consider them a negative male trait. (The women in my family don't have loud shouting matches if they're angry with you. They just make your life hell in a million subtle ways.)

I don't know how to stop having them, though. And who knows? Maybe they're necessary. Pity they're so hard to dispose of in an ecologically sound manner.