How It Feels to Be Feared

How it feels to be told your parents and others are afraid of you: not good. I’ve never even raised a hand to either of my mother’s nurses, but they’re scared of me. I’ve pushed my mother to the floor, but that was after she pushed me and I hadn’t anticipated she’d fall. I’ve raised an envelope opener to my father, but he’d pissed me off enough to do so. I’m not proud of any of this. I’d love to always be in control rather than in the throes of anger.

I feel like I’m a monster to them. I feel like no matter how nice I am to them, all they see me for is my yelling bouts. No matter how many changes I’ve made to my behavior or to my cleaning habits, all they’ll ever see me for is something I’m trying to control.

What I have learned is that it’s not good to shelve your anger and stress at others into a big yelling bout later. As to why I ended up with a bronze letter opener pointed at my father’s throat — he’s the type to get others angry and then get this sick, sadistic pleasure out of the power he gets out of it. I hate handing him that power. I hated handing him so much of that power that it got me to that point. He’s said about my weight, “What man will look at her?” He actually rhetorically asked it of my then life coach as I was watching him say it. He hadn’t yet noticed I was there. Once he did, I confronted him about it and as he seemed unapologetic about it, I spat in his face. He got an angrily shocked look on his face as though I’d been the one to draw first blood. Another time, he started to say that my miscarriage was a good thing. I stopped him. I proceeded to tell him how miserable it had made me to not want children, how I felt like my body had failed my ex in not giving him a child, and that I felt like less of a woman because of it. He shut up.

I don’t even remember what I was angry about the night I drew that envelope opener on him, just that he must’ve angered me to an extent like the ones I mentioned.

What I’m angry about now — the current reason I have my yelling bouts — is that my life isn’t moving forward. I still don’t have a job or a sex life. I feel stagnant. This feeling of being stagnant plus my shelving my anger and stress are why I yell in my room.

I don’t think it’s a good habit, but don’t yet use other methods of getting out that angry and stressed energy. Hence my Baker-Acting myself. I turned myself in to a short-term psych ward. I’ll admit, I hadn’t been taking my meds consistently enough. When I was, it was only the Wellbutrin. The Geodon was the one for the impulsivity. I have agitative depression. I’m not a bully; I was even picked on in high school. I have never started any of the carried-out violence I’ve been involved in. I am not one to just take it if someone else starts it, though. At least I’m here to take care of my problems, though.

~

I like one thing about this place. I like that I’m not stuck in my head here. With my cell phone and my laptop, I’d worry about what others thought of me. Whether it was potential employers, potential dates, potential donors to my writings, potentials viewers of the ads on my blog, I was in my head, worrying what others thought. I guess that’s part of adult life, worrying what others think, at least as far as getting what you want out of them is concerned. They do have to like the product. Otherwise, they won’t buy, date, or cooperate in a way you need them to. I hated having that swirling around in my head. I’m still me, but there’s a quiet in my head so I can hear myself think. Before, I was ruminating and stuck in my head.

I like this quiet.