Trigger warning. This is part 2 of a 2 part piece on anger. This piece contains descriptions trauma and abuse that may be upsetting. You can read part 1 here.
I kind of hate myself for always prioritizing others above myself.
I put my exes future above my own. And I supported him through his undergrad and graduate degrees while he worked a shit job he refused to leave. I chose to put off my goals until later, after his goals were met. The thing is, later never came for me. There were always excuses.
I allowed my dreams to be put on the back burner. We had a terminally ill special needs child and I took the hits on attendance at work, when she would inevitably try to die and get hospitalized. I was the one who left jobs that I loved “for the greater good” of our family. I know I cannot change it, but it pisses me off because it reminds me of some of the dumb choices my mom would make. Let me assure you that she wasn’t the best example of girl power.
Which brings me to my next point. I’m furious with my mother. I’ve worked through a lot of this anger, but it’s still there. I’m so mad that she chose some, probably mediocre, cock over her only living child. It sucks that she didn’t teach me how to listen to my intuition, and to use my voice. I am pissed off that she didn’t show me that women deserve a seat at every table. I’m angry that she turned a blind eye when my head would literally get bashed into actual cabinets for not sweeping the floor to my step-dad’s satisfaction. I’m left blazing when I think about how she would gaslight me after the abuse, and tell me I wasn’t good enough.
It was always my fault.
I could never win. I didn’t deserve good things because nothing about me was good, this is something I still believe today. But, I cannot imagine treating anyone that way. Especially a tiny human that came out of my own body.
I recognize that my mother, too, put up with abuse at the hands of my step father. I’m not an idiot. I understand the science of how things like this can happen. Despite that, there is a big part of me that really judges her for allowing herself to be controlled to the point of getting up in the middle of dinner to go buy her husband a bottle of ketchup because the 8 ounces that already covered his food wasn’t enough.
SHE LET HER DINNER GET COLD TO GO BUY MORE KETCHUP THAT HE DIDN’T EVEN USE.
The inner feminist in me recoils every single time I allow myself to recall this memory. I’m sure she had her reasons for staying with him. They were financially entangled, and we were barely scraping by in our lower middle class community despite the fact that they both were usually employed full time. Whatever her reasoning, it’s put a permanent strain on our relationship.
I dont have the typical mother daughter thing with her. She has mostly been absent for all the big events in my life. She didn’t attend my graduation, my bridal shower, wedding, or baby shower. It’s only been in the last couple of years that we’ve reconnected and started building our friendship. My mom and stepdad are excellent grandparents and that’s the most important thing to me.
But seriously, if I ever heard of one of my boys treating their partner like that, we would absolutely have a conversation. Many conversations. I would 100% intervene. Nobody deserves to be treated in such a barbaric manner.
My step-dad.
Of all the things that I have openly shared with the world, I find it hardest to speak about my step dad and our complicated relationship. My bio dad wasn’t really involved, and he died when I was eight years old. So, like it or not, step dad who sucked as a dad was the only dad I got.
Oh my glob, sometimes he was fucking awful.
Sometimes he was pretty okay.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the juxtaposition of the two dudes that exist inside of that grumpy man. His inner Mr. Hyde was an expert at mental abuse and corporal punishment. He was insanely angry so often that my heart would sink whenever the bus would drop us off and his jeep was in the driveway. I hate that he didn’t handle his shit, like the ‘real man’ he claimed to be. Instead he just repeated the cycle and created another statistic.
Dr Jekyll was pretty okay though. He liked to take me on nature walks and teach me about 60s rock. Parts of me hate him for giving me the rage that burns hot inside of me from time to time. Fuck him for not actually being nice to me until several months before we found out he would die.
Women’s voices are constantly muted by society. Not just society, but family and friends too. That pisses me off!
I had a close family member tell me that my marital problems weren’t serious, and that they were just the seven year itch. Despite the fact that I confided in them some extremely concerning controlling behavior I was experiencing at home. Their preconceived notions about how you shouldn’t get divorced and how men are superiorly created made it so they couldn’t hear my cry for help.
When I went to a close family member about my anxiety, they minimized my experience and said that I didn’t have anxiety. They knew so because they lived with a partner who had anxiety and I didn’t act anything like them. That one interaction delayed me seeking professional help by a few years.
I went 3 years with debilitating cramps that were progressively getting worse. My doctor is an excellent doctor, but he minimized my concerns. I don’t exactly blame him. He’s never had to deal with crippling cramps, so I don’t think he understood how miserable I was.
Society tells women to be strong in the face of negative emotions, but when we act strong in the face of those emotions and still express them, it gets minimized.
I didn’t look like I was in a ton of pain, so obviously I wasn’t. That’s so fucking stupid.
I went back to work 2 weeks after a C-section in a busy ER because it’s what I had to do. I didn’t complain because it wouldn’t have done any good. Why complain about the pain when I know it won’t be heard? He did order basic imagery and testing, but didn’t really make an effort to look further into it. His grand plan was to ‘wait and see’. I finally got the hysterectomy I’ve been begging for last week.
It turns out, I’m not crazy. I really was in significant pain. I had dense adhesions that had formed, cementing my bladder and uterus together.
This whole “seen and not heard” thing that society tries to force upon women fucking sucks. Sometimes it leads to consequences to our health.
That really pisses me off!
According to The Mayo Clinic, anger is a natural response to threats that come our way. Your body releases adrenaline and causes your heart to race, blood pressure to soar, and you feel more like the Hulk, than a mere human. It can be the squeaky wheel that helps you to get your needs met. It can be the motivation you need to propel you forward toward your next goal.
When we are angry, we are supposed to be uncomfortable. That’s how the sneaky bitch gets us to pay attention to her, silly. After a lot of therapy and tons of terrible examples of expressing my anger and emotions, I have come to learn that we cannot grow without truly being with our anger.
I read recently a quote that says, ‘I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me her real name was grief’ and I felt that. For me trauma and grief go hand in hand.
My anger is a symptom of my grief. I grieve because bad shit happened to me as a little kid and nobody ever helped me to deal with it.
If we can learn to accept that uncomfortable feeling, we can learn to grow from it and make positive change. It’s o-fucking-kay to have big negative emotions, my friend. It’s all in how you handle it.
I discovered a few years ago that I am a writer. It’s literally a part of who I am. I process best when I write things out. I love actually writing things by hand, and then typing them out later. Writing is a cathartic process for me. It’s been instrumental in my ability to work through my anger. My pen is my sword and this kind of emotional muck is better expelled from my brain than left to fester and eat away at my psyche.
I continue to be angry but I don’t hide it anymore. I have learned to express myself in more gentle ways.
- By writing out my frustrations.
- By exercising.
- And by practicing good self care.
I am passionate about modeling positive emotional responses to my kids. Their teachers have complimented me about how my kids are able to talk about their feelings as young as five. If I mess up in front of them, I tell them I’m sorry and I show them that I mean it. I admit when I am wrong. They learn so much better when they are shown how to do the thing. When I inevitably yell and swear when I stub my toe, I try to call myself on it and I ask them what I could have done instead. What would be a better choice than yelling?
I encourage you to examine your relationship with anger. The next time something vexes you, don’t blow your top. Sit with it. Think about it. Try to understand it, then move past it. This kind of work is hard work, but it’s so important. I’m cheering for you!
