26.

I get angry. I get extremely angry. I am not sure all of the roads that led me to being like this, but the point is I get really, really, mad. I do not take it out on my wife, I do not take it out on my child, I am not prone to yelling, and I do not start fights. When I get extremely mad I tend to be very biting, and short with everyone around me. You can see it on my face, but I am not going to blow up on you, I may belittle you somewhat, but will probably apologize quickly and feel like an idiot and get even madder for letting myself get out of hand.

Like I said I don’t know when it started. I have vague memories of my Mom telling me I had a temper and yelling at her that I didn’t, which is a great illustration of the problem. I kind of wish I got angry in the traditional way, pressure builds, you blow up, everything goes back to normal for a while. With me it’s better to think of it more as a reservoir. I can hold a massive amount of it before it spills over, but it seems to always be slowly filling and filling, the pressure getting higher every day. For a time it’s not noticeable because there is so much room to fill before you can even tell it’s on the rise. Because of this once I realize there is a problem it is more often than not, to late to calm back down. I know it’s coming when someone starts talking to me and I am picking their words apart in my head looking for some point of weakness to exploit, something to say back, or trying to find some snide tone in their sentence. I am primed for conflict.

What drives me most crazy about this is that like a reservoir it’s not something that can just be undone with the realization that the problem is there. It will be with me for days once I get to the breaking point. I work very hard to drain the rage, but once it’s topped off there is a lot of frustration to rid myself of, and not to many outlets.

More than my weight, this is something I want gone from my life. From a health perspective it pushes my blood pressure all over the place, keeps me awake for hours at night, and causes me to make certain decisions during work outs that cause a variety of minor injuries. From a life perspective it makes me hard to be around and generally unlikable. I want to break my things when I get that way. In the past I did, I believe a power ranger or two suffered a terrible fate, to my immediate regret. Shameful.

I have been making strides to fixing this, and I was/am doing really good, but the last two or three days I find myself in that state of agitation for no good reason. I am frustrated, finances are tight (this will never change), my job is in a slump (frequent), and I am hitting another work out wall (like clockwork). I am getting mad. I know this because my wife asked me to do something and my brain started asking “what’s that supposed to mean?” questions about everything she says. So far I have been able to shut it down, but I find that every time I do I stack another Jinga block of rage on the tower.

I need to find constructive ways to deal with the anger. For most of my people related triggers I am getting better at dealing with them. I am trying to really look at things from the other persons mind set. They still might be an idiot for doing what they did, but in their mind it was needed, it was appropriate, it was justified. Nothing I think or yell out a car window is going to change the fact that they thinks they’re right. So why waste the time in being angry that they aren’t as smart as me? This has gone a long way and helping me remember that I am in fact not superior to everyone around me, which keeps me from losing my mind do to other peoples actions (mostly).

Life however, is something that seems completely out my hands, and not being able to exercise control over it frustrates me greatly. Frustration can boil over into rage quickly for me (see: simple drum pattern that escaped me). More than over eating, more than blaming my weight issues on genes, more than any of that I wish I could change this. It is a point of shame for me. I should be able to keep a level head, let the little things wash over me, let go of the things I can’t control, and think before I react.

I have decided to approach this in the same way I approach weight loss, as it has affected my eating habits for years. For example I may be going along following some diet, then something makes me really mad, well I don’t destroy me toys anymore, so maybe I just destroy my chances at losing weight, and in anger eat 6 hot and ready original glazed (has happened). So I am going to take the anger apart where it starts and try to rebuild a functional human on top of it. I will most likely not be posting in as great of detail on this topic, as it involves people at a level I don’t think is appropriate to just dump on to the internet, but I am going to fix this, because I don’t want my baby to grow up wondering why her dad is so mad all the time.