Proverbs 15, Verse 1
"A soft answer turns away wrath, but harsh words cause quarrels."
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CHIPPED WISDOM:
We've been together, you and I, for a while now. You know me. Or, you think you do, and maybe that's enough. You know what makes me tick, and tock, you know how I write. The cadence, the over and the under, you know about the swearing and the glaring. You know that I can be mean and sweet and funny and melancholy, wandering, ranting and roving.
You know.
You know that I am overworked, underpaid Anatevka, that I cling desperately to some of the same things you do, because I am like you, I am of you, I am you. That's why you come here, I suppose, because you see someone with whom you can identify, and someone who is struggling hard to identify with you, and that's nice. We can take comfort in each other's neuroses, we can wear them like a mink stole or a HAZMAT suit or a starched white dickey at a fancy dinner. A bullet-proof vest. Chain mail. A nun's habit.
Did I ever tell you that I can make a homespun nun's habit (that looks halfway decent, actually), out of three black t-shirts and one white one? I taught myself how to do that when I was fourteen, and maybe that's a digression better left to another post. See? Just when you think you know a blogger...
And maybe you do know me, but you don't know my anger. Perhaps you're sitting there saying to yourself, "Of course I know his anger-- every post of his is positively dripping with it!" but that's not so. That's not anger, that's acrimony or cruelty, it's insecurity cloaked in a self-righteous homespun nun's habit. It's bullshit. It's silly.
Well, I don't really know what it is, but it isn't anger.
I won't let you see my anger. I'm too careful, too repressed, too petrified of what you'll think, what you'll say, who you'll call, how you'll look at me next time.
How will you look at me next time? I can't bear it. Don't look at me.
If I let you see my anger, it's because I've known you long enough and loved you hard enough to not care anymore. Lucky you. You've hit the jackpot. Mazel.
Anger is so ugly-- my anger is, anyway. I know, I know, how can it be that different from yours? No anger is especially beautiful (although I've seen a redhead or two get so angry it was kind of hot-- then again, they weren't angry at me) and am I putting myself on a pedestal by saying that my anger is especially vulgar and vile and vitriolic that the greater populous should be shielded from it?
I guess so. I guess I am saying that.
My father does not get shielded. Not anymore. Never did.
I let him have it yesterday. I can't explain why. It's too long and stupid to go into, all the precipitating events, the antecedents, the clauses and the pauses-- it doesn't matter why. But, once I realized what he was saying, or, rather, what he wasn't saying about me, about my wife, about my children and my dog and my house and my lifestyle and my everything, well, something just-- un-clicked. You know how people say they realized something when something "just clicks"? Well, with me, with anger, with that peculiar feeling and emotion, something decidedly un-clicks. It's very un-Nehru. Nehru got angry, I'm sure, but I can't imagine he ever told his father to go fuck himself.
Maybe he did-- I don't know.
I un-clicked and found myself standing in the living room screaming my throat dry, seeing spots on the ceiling that probably weren't actually there just roaring. My wife was standing by the china cabinet staring at me. The children were be-bopping around, hopefully oblivious to the appalling wreck I was becoming in front of them. The basset hound was contemplating the energy required to tongue her privates. And, instantly, I was sixteen again, putting on a one-man show in the living room, screaming at my parents to decry the injustices of the searing, embarrassing, painful world until my mother would give up and pretend she had laundry to do.
Tonight, my daughter flipped out because there were no noodles to eat. And I had noodles, but they were mixed with shrimp and pork and my wife doesn't want them eating food that has come into contact with pork and shrimp and so the screaming continued and I gave up eating and it's Jewish and I don't care but she cares so I care and there was more screaming and finally I lost it and became a big ugly man bastard and it all stays in there for so long and I talk a good game about it hoo boy do I ever but sometimes punctuation just gets in the way and I still capitalize I because of my good breeding but that's about all I can muster because it's almost eight oclock and theres still so much to do and I'm too tired to scream anymore
Expressing anger in a healthy way doesn't feel good, you know? It just doesn't feel good. Not that expressing it by exploding feels good, but it's at least cathartic. When you use "I" statements, there's no catharsis. There's nothing. Just political correctness and ditto sheets from a psych hospital. And we've been together for a while now, you and I, and you know I can't stand ditto sheets.
Goosefrahbah...
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