she can rage

I just realized the other day that maybe I'm not a total asshole. Maybe not even a little bit. Well, probably a little bit. But not nearly as much as I originally thought. Here's the thing: I've spent a lot of my life hating on myself. One of the reasons is that I can be pretty bitchy. Kinda mean? I never mean it, though. Or rarely. And I spend a lot of time apologizing to the people I love because, of course, I'm never mean to strangers. I'm patient and kind and very First Corinthians 13:4-8 with strangers. I mean, poor them, right? I assume everyone suffers and no one actually intends to be a dick, so I'm forgiving. But not generally of myself or my close peeps. Wait, that's not true. I'm forgiving of my close peeps but mostly I get cranky with my husband.

Ah. Poor dude.

Once, in our early days together, I brought him to a football game. I say game not 'match' because this was a Canadian Football League game. Pointy brown balls not round white ones. I love sports. I yell at teams a lot. After a particularly hearty round of 'Get 'em you #@*%s!!! ' I looked at his shocked expression and said, "Thank you for loving me." His response? "It takes some doing."

It does take some doing! I concede this point fo sho. But in sickness and in (mental) health, yeah? Suckah! Lucky for him/us I received a golden nugget of information the other day about anger. That irritability and irrational anger may be symptoms of a maladaptive stress response. That I am in 'fight mode' a lot of the time because my autonomic nervous system is broken.

Bam, mo fo!

Now this is no excuse for being nasty but it is a reasoning that I can get behind. It feels forgiving, of myself. Which is always a good place to start when you want to forgive others. Take that New Testament.

And of course there is nothing wrong with anger per se. All emotions are messengers that give us very important information about our external and internal world. Anger can give us the energy to fight injustice. Etc, etc, blah blah blah. I get it. I just never really got it. Until now and then until I forget and have to remind myself that it's okay to be angry but maybe that it's not necessarily okay to be a bitch.