Busy day today, that started a bit late, but was all going fine, but then ran into some small frustrations, which grew into larger frustrations, whereupon a thing happened and I experienced an Emotion, and that emotion was Anger; and then there was another random stupid frustrating thing on top of that; and I got to the gym WAY later than I’d hoped to, fully expecting to find no room in the pool; but lo, there was a lane just for me, and I Swam like an Angry Shark, and after a while the Anger leached away, as things do in the water, and I eventually realized it was a dumb thing to be angry about, so I’m not going to tell you about it here, because that would serve nothing but to stir up trouble. Sorry.
But I am telling you about the process of it, because I think how I managed it was important; I didn’t do any of the things that instantly leapt to mind, but instead I exercised (furiously) and got it out of my system, and then was able to think rationally, and come home and phone Mark and say, “Such an angry-making thing has happened to me!” and he was able to say “Oh good golly, you poor thing!” and we talked about rational steps to take to solve the problem in the future. Which may or may not happen, because (as with so many things) it involves other people, and there’s only so much you can do about other people.
I don’t get angry very often. I probably, truth be told, ought to get angry more often. According to a therapist I saw for a long while, years back, I *am* angry a lot, underneath, but have trained myself not to let it out, not to even feel it as such; I’ve turned it to other expressions. I am not aggressive, assertive; I am timid-spoken. It’s why I like to drink, especially in company: drinking emboldens me, takes away some of the social fear/shyness/reluctance/whatever you want to call it.
So I’m actually okay with the fact that I felt angry–angry enough to thrash about in the pool, swimming faster than ever, working off steam. Because my initial, anger-driven ideas on how to respond did not involve yelling or confronting or anything like that; they involved passive-aggressive, backhanded, cowardly bullshit.
And that’s, well, bullshit. But that’s how I would have handled such a thing, for most of my life. That’s all I knew how to do. And I don’t want to do that any more. I want to address the problem directly, with the parties who are actually in a position to do something about it. Whether they do or not–that’s out of my hands. What I can do is speak my mind, clearly and directly.
It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? 🙂
Anyway, it was a great swim.