The laundry is not the issue

 "You don't have to do all that laundry, you know. I can help out."

Stomp. Feel voice raising. Fucking do it anyway. "I had to do this laundry, right now, because I don't have any work clothes left AT ALL." Feel the anger rolling off my shoulders, fingertips, tongue, feel tears stinging the back of my eyelids and I regret it all instantly. The tone. The response to someone offering to lighten my burden. 

Yeah, I'm not normal. 

He lets me cry and go to him, apologizing through my tears. "I'm sorry, that was not the right way to speak when you were trying to help me." He knows I'm trying. For some reason, he accepts my apology. I feel I don't deserve it. 

I've been exploring a couple of angles over the past day. My therapist offered some information on types of anger expression, a psychological and emotional abuse pattern, and negative, self-blaming talk. I'm looking into anger management strategies on my own. My anger is aggressive because I use volume and tone to kind of.. just get my feelings across and get people off my back, I think, ultimately. THIS MAKES ME FEEL SO MAD! I'M GOING TO TELL YOU THAT I AM SO FUCKING MAD. OVER LAUNDRY. LEAVE ME ALONE. 

Every assessment says I need anger management help, like, yesterday. 

It's Friday morning and I'm not working the next two days, so at the end of the day, I could wear something not soiled a second time and move on. I'm not angry he didn't do laundry. I'm angry I don't have time for errands or for myself. Instead of finding a way to manage my time or communicating that our differing schedules means yes, I would appreciate him doing some laundry one evening.. I am aggressive. What I mean in my heart of hearts is more along the lines of "this is the best time for me to do it, and the drawers are getting pretty empty! I don't mind to do it because it's a load of my work clothes." With a neutral, hell, even positive tone of voice. Because it's not the god-awful hour that I'm up running errands that bothers me, and it's not that I think he's lazy, I think I'm just mad at myself. Who lets all the clothes get piled up like that? Why can't I run this household? Why don't I accept help? Why don't I even ask? Ding ding ding, negative self-talk. 

So. What am I learning here?

• Anger is a normal response to situations. The way anger is expressed has to be assertive to be healthy, not aggressive or passive.
• I blame and feel hate for myself very often. 
• Psychological abuse includes attacking someone else's self-esteem, and my way is usually by looking down on the other person and treating them like they are stupid, like they don't understand my situation, and treating them like a child. Origin may be because I'm angry with myself, and I don't know how to address that yet, so I take it out elsewhere. Again, aggressively.
• Another form of psychological abuse I employ is refusing to acknowledge a problem that the other person feels is important. I addressed this yesterday with my person. One thing I do almost every time without failure is minimize their experience of my outburst or tone of voice or content of my message, and argue that I didn't say it that way. I have to remember that I am listening to someone who is here of their own choice, who loves me, who is not manipulating or tricking me in any way. They are simply sharing how I made them feel. To brush that off and begin an argument undermines them as a human being with emotions and responses to experiences is selfish and disrespectful of me. I need to really listen, and pump the brakes and apologize. 

I have a notebook where I'm starting to self-monitor my anger. I write the situation, what angry thought I'm having, how it makes me feel, and what I do to respond. I'm looking for a pattern to hopefully help tackle this thing. 

It is painful, unearthing the beast inside me and looking into its eyes for the first time. 

A return

I've decided to attempt to blog again, perhaps even daily. I don't share this blog with just anyone, and it's been a couple of years - but I am making an serious attempt to turn over a new leaf and improve myself. 

What a laugh, me trying to write my way to self-actualization. 

This is a pattern. 

I started using TalkSpace yesterday, in a last desperate attempt to quell my issues with stress, anger, and communication. I'm still in love. I still have my person. But I'm all of the things I've been writing for years, and each conversation that escalates to argument leaves me with the same reprimand: "I've been saying these things to you for years." 

I'm afraid of myself these days, because in all reality, my life is good. But I'm stuck in my head and I know I can and will do more damage to those closest to me. From my mouth, my words, my sighs, my screams. I know I've written about job changes and education and the general gist of my life here, but I'm actually in a really good place financially and career-wise. I returned to school for my dream job, something I knew I wanted to do since I was about thirteen. I am a nurse. I spend my days actively listening, providing an outlet in a lot of situations to people who have it much worse, at least physically, than myself. People are angry when they are not in control and are in pain. All of the customer service experience I've gained throughout my life has prepared me for the terrible things people say when they are scared and hurting. I'm running around all day and night, solving problems, and it's sometimes a quite thankless job. But I couldn't ask for anything better, I finally feel some sense of belonging and strive to provide for people all that I can. I bite my tongue when people are taking their anger out on me. I have a lot of good feedback from management and patients. I am gentle and I am a provider and advocate. I know I'm very good at my job. 

So why do I then go home and throw all of it out the window? This is what I'm trying to explore myself and with my new therapist. How can I spend all of this energy listening and thinking carefully before I speak for a paycheque, but not for someone who has my heart and built a nest with me? 

Do I take the "learn how to manage stress" road? Is it just about burnout? 

Or do I not love him? 

What's wrong with me? 

I'm terrified it's either all me, I'm broken beyond repair, I don't even hear myself being unkind and I can't understand it. The alternative is that he is broken, too. Or that I'm actually okay, and maybe someone else is being unkind to me. It's a mess in my head when I try to wade back through the muddy waters of our conversations. I feel like the words that leave my mouth are reasonable questions or comments, but I'm met with hurt and frustration. 

If I can't even understand what I'm doing wrong in the first place, I must be a lost case. 

I spend my mornings sitting outside, and I'll chain smoke, and I'll close my eyes and picture him. How good he is, and how I will be good to him when I see him next. I'll meditate, or something resembling meditation because I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'll feel a warmness in my belly and imagine him smiling, and us laughing together, and how the night will end positively and I will turn over from our nest and put a fat number "1" on a board that reads "it has been __ days since we had a screaming match and made each other cry." 

God, I hope my therapist can help me.

cigarettes

i hate that i started smoking. i remember countless arguments when i rebuked him for something that i found vile. but i started smoking little peach cigarellos - before they became illegal to sell - when i worked a very draining job a couple of years ago. to take a break to smoke was tantamount to a seven minute slice of heaven, a moment of escape and solitude. i began to crave the high, the lightness, the shortness of breath, the dizzying feeling of love that can only come from a small stack of paper and chemicals. i longed for those minutes we would spend talking outside, bonding over a mutual destruction of our insides. now it just reminds me of my loneliness. it makes me feel hot with sadness and regret. it tastes like defeat on my tongue, and my heartbeat quickens from nicotine, but i imagine it’s because of my hate for myself.

i’m looking out at the moon in the midday sky, wishing i could go there. i should be alone. i won’t hurt anyone anymore that way. i’m looking out at the apartment complexes spread out around me, thinking they are all houses but none of them can ever be my home.

i’m smoking camels and i’m torn into pieces over how i want to be reminded of him but i don’t deserve to share in anything that was his.

On anger and perfection

I am the strangest perfectionist I know.

The picture that usually comes to my mind when I think of a "perfectionist" is someone who is always very organized, almost always quite intelligent, and of course they are successful. I didn't  necessarily believe that someone could have a desire to be perfect and through that desire become angry and controlling - and sometimes even fail at doing things right.

I realized that I have a great desire to make sure that things are always running smoothly. This isn't always because I hate confrontation or have trouble finding solutions for problems, but the best way I can think to describe it is a craving for efficiency. I don't like it when things could be going smoothly but someone, somewhere along the way, made an error or didn't make an effort. I can accept that I can't control everything, but nothing puts a damper on my day more than someone not pulling their weight.

So sometimes when I find the broken link along the chain of "things that should be going great for me/my job/etc. today," I'm really angry. Someone didn't think to communicate effectively or even at all. Someone didn't order something we ran out of at work. Someone had an excuse not to do something very important that is now going to fuck it up for everyone else. Instead of trying to empathize with the reasons why something didn't go as planned, or ignoring it, or anything else that's probably more helpful - I pull the extra weight and resent everyone for it. I can stew and hold a grudge for an entire work day if I really don't think someone listened or took the necessary steps to prevent a problem. And I think deep inside, I'm feeling righteous because I knew better than someone else did and I know that I'll swoop in to fix the problem someone else created.

To make things better, something about waking up on any Wednesday morning puts me in a terrible mood. The first thing that puts a bump in my road on a Wednesday will make you wish you had never met me at all. The exact same scenario could come up on a Tuesday or a Monday and I will be fine, but say a prayer if it's Wednesday. I've been hyper aware of my mid-week grumpiness and have been trying to take extra care to remember to breathe, tell myself it won't matter later, all of the mindful solutions I've learned to make sure my heart doesn't expire on me. So after a few weeks of being a little bit less "Satan" to my co-worker, I said goodbye today and asked if I had been as mean lately and if I could do anything else to improve.

I was hoping for something positive. I was pleading for a pat on the back and encouragement that I'm heading in the right direction. Instead I was met with a pause before, "it's not that you're being mean today. That's just you being Sarah."

Maybe this has multiple interpretations, or the word choice wasn't exactly the sentiment they wished to express, but for now; this is crushing me.

It's not that I'm mean for a good reason, or on a certain day of the week, or when the stars align just so.

It's just who I am to some people.

I've watched over time as some people have regarded me with respect and complimented my abilities and work ethic, to eventually stop saying positive things and instead make jokes about my controlling and angry attitude. I don't want to be the butt of "it must be that time of the month" jokes every day, but that's who I have been more often than not. I threw a temper tantrum last week over something that went a little screwy with my computer. This is not normal behaviour, not for me, not for anyone.

I value working hard and well - but not over respect and sanity. I am desperately trying to learn how to balance caring about what I produce without alienating others or worrying about whether they have the same output.

This bit of writing isn't going to have a happy ending where I reveal how I've solved my problem. I'm certainly a work in progress.