Rage Against...Everything

Ugh. Yesterday wound up being a "mental health day." Argued with my daughter for what seems like the 900th morning in a row. She is a budding Rosa Parks - she has passive resistance down pat. "It's time to brush your hair now." "No." "Okay, then you can either brush your teeth or make your lunch." "I don't want to do either." "Okay, then take a time out and get to a place where you feel like doing something." "No." See, it's right about here that the steam begins to pour out of my ears and my head begins spinning. My new solution is that she can go to school with hair like medusa and breath like her snakes, but I'm not going to battle anymore. When it's time to go, it's time to go. But I digress.

The end result of that particular battle was that I started to cry. And I couldn't stop. For hours. I called into work and blathered "I can't come in like this." And all day, the rage I seem to feel at my world just came in great salty swells. Two jobs, full time school, single parenting, paying the ex's bills, hogtied by the ex's random and pointless rules, precancerous cells on my cervix and the cost of a Naturopathic Doctor out of pocket, being (frivolously) sued and the legal bills that go with it, emergency room bills from a weak moment in which my daughter had a very high fever last November, Iraq, Bush. Most of the time it's my life and it's fine and I'm still alive and I laugh and lick and have a great time and no way does any of this begin to even touch the vibrant and succulent core of who I am. But every once in awhile I look at it in a particularly sleep-deprived, time-compressed, junk-fooded, self-pitying angle, and I seen what a total lack of control I have over the world, and I freak the fuck out.

Because the teachers say that anger falls away when you're doing it right. And I'm doing my best and here I am angry, like constantly. And I'm supposed to love that, because it's my reality right now. But instead I feel terribly incompetent in just about all aspects of my life. Which is, when you look at it, sort of ludicrous because here I am handling all of the above. I always get myself into trouble when I lean too heavily on any particular teaching and try to fit myself into a philosophical mold. The truth is, each of us has our own unique philosophy and no one else's is a substitute for that.

My truth is that I never managed to get angry before. I was always too afraid of everyone else's anger, and of losing their approval. And so I've always done the nice thing. Stepped back, let it go. But where did it really go? Nowhere. The same damn psychic bank account that held my fear of being alone for so long. Don't know why I bother avoiding anything, it just waits till I'm ready. But maybe that's fine - when I'm ready I'm ready, and not a minute sooner. So this is a good thing. Even though it feels bad. I want it to be over, but wanting never helped anything. Just like wanting control. That's served me SO well so far...

It's just that I'm not supposed to have boundaries, you know? Not supposed to need them. But when I don't I just feel trampled. So I guess I do need them. Until I don't. I need to stop living like I'm already some kind of master. I so often ignore where I'm really at in favor of where I want to be, and then every time I manage the same wide-eyed surprise when everything comes crashing down. How bout that...

Reminder number 472: if you let yourself be exactly where you are, you don't have to add guilt and resistance to the pile.

Why is the present so damn hard to stay with? Because it is. Until it isn't. I reckon I'll be fine either way.