Seeing Red

Introduction

I wouldn’t say I have anger management issues. But I feel like sometimes I have anger issues. I don’t know exactly when I started to experience rage, but I believe it’s become something of a problem sometime between 2003 and 2007. I think it’s when I ran out of patience.

You have anger management problems when you can’t control how you act when you are angry. I don’t think I have a problem with control. The problem is the feeling. I get ragey. I get palpitations, my ears turn red, my heart thuds so hard I feel like I sway back and forth to the raw beat of it. I think I DO see red. I get dizzy.

I’m not sure if this is healthy. I’m not sure if I have a condition. It’s a little bit frightening sometimes.

Yet I wouldn’t say that I react badly in the face of rage. I may spew invective, throw up a few unmistakable hand signals, or interject a choice piece of profanity or two, but I have never hit anyone (okay, maybe shoved, but that’s another story and I did apologise profusely for it afterwards and it was only one time oh I’m so sorry). Hmm. Well, I have punched a wall. With both hands. And kicked a hole in a wall.

Okay.

Fine.

Maybe I have anger management issues as well.

The Data

Anyway, going back to the emotion (anger), I felt It today at lunch, when I was standing in the lunch line with a colleague and two people cut in front of us. I felt It last week when a colleague was treated rudely by a counterparty. I felt It at the Swing Out Sister concert, before SOS came out to play. I felt It when I was telling my driver to turn left and he turned right. I felt It when a waiter ignored my parents at a restaurant. I felt It when a motorcycle was trying to act like a car on South Super. I am feeling it now just thinking about the… that… are doing. These are just some of the more recent random ones I recall off the top of my head.

The Theory

An Older Wiser once asked me (for conversations’ sake) what made me angry. If I recall correctly, I said “I think oppression makes me angry”. Now I KNOW it does. So after a little bit of soul-searching, I think I’ve finally gotten down to The Seven Things that Make Me Angry. These are the following:

• Oppression
• Injustice (helplessness and the feeling of no recourse)
• Seeing people being treated badly
• Bad service
• Incompetence
• Rudeness
• Extreme arrogance

This is a list of honesty, one that claims no consistency. I’m just being frank. I could rant until Betsy and Bessie make their way to the front door and let themselves in, but I won’t; this isn’t the place for it (I believe that would be my Bubble Gum Blog). No, here is where I do some introspection on the roots of my anger, note a measure of growth (is it really growth?) in myself, and identify the things I really need to fix.

Origins?

I can only speculate as to where this rage was birthed. I believe that my temper has always been latent in me – planted by my genetic (the distant Spanish part) and social (the Cavite part) origins.

It wasn’t until I moved back, however, and began to face the harsh realities of the working (or non-working) life that the Beast came alive. I mean, here I’ve come, from a place where oppression is seen as a bad thing (even though it’s not been totally eradicated), there is recourse for most people, most things work, most people are polite, and most places provide good service (if they don’t, you tell the manager and you don’t tip your server) – to a place that offers an abundance of The Seven Things that Make Me Angry. Patience, the virtue, has worn quite thin.

That said, I’ve discovered a thing or seven (again!) about me and anger and how I handle it.

Analysis and Observations

1. If I see something afoot, more often than not, I will speak up about it. I didn’t do this very much before. I would kind of seethe inwardly and bitch about it afterwards, thinking of all of the things I could have or should have said or done. But now, I say something.
2. And what I say, well… I try my best to make it proportionate of how sure I am about the situation. For instance, if I’m positive I’m right, I will Unleash the Beast on your punky ass. If I’m not so sure, I try to keep my cool or at least grit my teeth enough to say something of a more inquisitive/fact-finding-mission-type remark (i.e. “excuse me, there’s a line”).
3. I think I tone things down when I’m unsure, and I think I have refrained from speaking up before, because of fear. I have, I believe, flown off the handle for something I really shouldn’t have. Maling akala. I was all up in the Kool-Aid and I didn’t know what flavor it was. Back in the day, I was afraid of what people would think of me if I did that. Now, while I still do fear that, I’m more afraid of busting it out on someone who doesn’t deserve it.
4. I find that in the more properly confrontational of situations, I tend to be eloquent when I UtB. No profanity. Man in the Indian resto in London is a case in point. I’m elegant in some cases, schoolmarmy in others. I have been known to strike fear into the hearts of erring adolescent students.
5. As much as I hate to admit it, and as much as I try not to be, I, too, am rude sometimes when I get ragey. Well, when I get frustrated at least. This is wrong.
6. Finally, I’ve got two outs – first, if I’m wrong, I’ll apologise. If I’ve gone all batty, and in the final throes of battle, I find out I was wrong, I’ll make sure I was wrong, and then apologise.
7. Second, as a trap door of sorts – a twist and turn, if you will – I laugh. It’s all one big piss-take. I will take the piss. Maybe not of the persons involved, but of the whole, entire, absurd situation. So if I’ve told someone off, and they’ve made excuses, and when all’s said and done both parties are unclear as to what just happened or whether one had won or not – after all this – I smile. I smile a very mysterious (I’d like to think, because it’s quite a mystery to me as well) smile, and I laugh inwardly. It’s all very funny, really. We take ourselves entirely too seriously sometimes.

Moving Forward

Okay, all well and good. But clearly, I’ve been bad and I need to be good.

• I need to restore at least a measure of that patience upon which I once prided myself (perhaps, however, a lot of it was weakness masquerading as patience). This applies most especially to me visibly losing my temper with people who can’t help it. (Refer to driver example under Data above.)
• I must never be rude to people, no matter how vexing they can get. Older Wiser once said that her mama once said, “it’s nice to be important, but it’s important to be nice”. Amen to that.
• I must never engage in the type of behavior that I so woefully rue.

By Way of A Long and Winding Conclusion

So I’ve grown some. But I’m still a long way off. Back towards patience, back to the middle way. I never want to be consumed by rage and hate. I’d rather die than let that happen. But I’d also rather die than see people pushed around or treated badly and let it pass.

There’s the rub, though. A part of me feels that the way of peace, the way that, say, Jesus taught, was me before the Beast came alive. That I’ve lost something precious now that I’ve turned into a raging bitch. God is the only judge of man – who am I to judge if people cut in line? What are rules anyway, but the constructs of man?

On the other hand, that Little Voice inside Me would nag incessantly if I stood by and let someone cut in the lunch line, or in the bathroom line. Small beans, but… it’s the principle of the thing. We who have more must step up for those to whom less has been given. We just need a little more patience, a little more kindness.

At the same time, though, if there is no line, I’ll be the first one in, elbows flying (Mercury Drug case in point). And my road behavior is a little bit of a different thing – I confess I’m a bit of a monster on the road. But I use my indicator lights, and I give way to those who use their indicator lights to signal their intention to change lanes. If you don’t signal, though, watch out you poor bastard because I’m not letting you in. And depending on my mood, yes, I am going to take the exit lane and cut back into traffic.

Sigh. I’m no saint, and I’m not aiming to be saintly. Just good. And maybe not so angry so much. (I do sound like I’m schizo sometimes, though…)

The Secret Weapon vs. Anger and Bad Things