Inner Hell Beasts

I have a short fuse. In the early days of simplicity, this issue was solved by striking the offender of my temper over the head. They returned in kind, it began a brief, vicious cycle culminating in a lot of noise, lasting about five minutes and leaving behind a couple of bruises and scrapes that would go away in 48 to 72 hours. Ah, I remember those days. They were fun. Nowadays if I get angry to the point where I can't brush it off and change the subject, I say something rude to the other person and they, if they are worth their grit, will say something rude back. Rude sayings will fly like fists until it becomes ridiculous, until one of us begins laughing. I'll apologize for the original rude thing, they will apologize for carrying it on so well, we shake hands either verbally or physically and it becomes a running joke later on. Once again, I haven't changed much since infancy. Actually, very few people change, and the only differences between childhood and adulthood is responsibility, manners and a better dress code. The ones who do become other people, and aren't able to keep the same person that they were born as nestled somewhere inside themselves, do it darkly, and I am sorry for them.

Around fourteen, I discovered a new kind of angry. I shall call it “black rage,” I think, because it's rather like black ice, I never see it coming, which means that I cannot curb it and it usually lands me in a sticky mess. I am so blissfully ignorant of the onslaught of black rage that I do not understand or come to realise its influence until after it has set in. My short temper is even shorter, and it stops being the fun-loving “shrug it off or hit something” temper and degenerates into the not so friendly “FUME! Fume until the very vestiges of your soul are corrupted, MWAHAHAHAHAAAA!” temper. I get depressed more easily, but not the normal depressed where you sit in the middle of the floor, have a nice sob for about three minutes and then do something sensible, practical, helpful and uplifting such as reorganizing the sock drawer or re-alphabetizing the family dvd collection even though it is only going to magically un-alphabetize itself as soon as your back is turned. Once this is done, it does not have to be done again for another couple of months or so unless it is October or April, in which case, you'll probably have to repeat the process in about two weeks. No, the depression that comes with black rage isn't solved with the conquering of sock drawers, though blubbing does occasionally take the sting out, it rolls on and on and on, and it has to be addressed daily. One finds oneself searching for something that cannot even be remembered, let alone found. You think, one day, that you've gotten rid of the bloody weed of a thing at last and can move on with life, only to discover that it grows back during the night. In the meantime, the laundry moulders unfolded, dishes pile up, simple tasks go undone, and you're lucky if you fully dispose of it at all before the black rage is identified and seen to.

What is very terrible about the black rage is that life seems to go on as usual. One still laughs, enjoys little things even if they do seem banal, one is still capable of appearing to be a human being. You can make jokes, and be light-hearted from time to time, you can still see the broken, fragile facets of other people that make them so interesting, and be helpful to them. Since you don't even know that you are angry, your better judgement is muffled. You think that you are making good, solid decisions in your words and your actions, and the practical upshot is more like letting loose a whirlwind on a small suburb (it reminds me of the Diary of Rinya Pyris, actually, and no, that doesn't make her a Mary Sue). It's a bit of an indicator line, actually: the level of your abysmal stupidity is directly proportional to the closeness with which your current situation is linked to the real problem.

Sometimes I catch it in a matter of days, and sometimes it takes months to find out. In the meantime, the subject of the rage spills its bile over into little things that one was aware of but not bothered by. It seeps into old wounds that have already been dressed, cleaned and healed, and wakes up ancient monsters that had been slumbering happily for years. You work and work to bring the vastly culminating little things before God, and He disposes of it, but they keep on coming, and you keep praying for the wrong things (please, help me forgive this, please help me control my temper, please help me be like that, please keep me from doing this, please prevent me from being that) until the true nature of the problem is found out and laid at His feet.

When I was fourteen, this black rage was not subtle. I was a rude little beast to everyone around me (all four of them) and they, also being fourteen and not subtle enough to address the problem, left me to my own devices. I can't say that this did anything to improve my temper, it only added to the many superficial things that I was angry at, and utterly failed to indicate the real, raging issue. I only found it out when I snapped loudly at a distant acquaintance who hadn't even said anything offensive and if I remember correctly, was trying to encourage me. Lucky for everyone, he was a good-natured soul (or had a “shrug it off or hit something” temper) and was not sure what I was apologising for later on. I finally identified that there WAS a problem, which turned out to be 3/4ths of the battle right there, rooted it out by the grace of God and then spent days trying to track the damage that I had done in the meantime.

I did not know until this morning that I had been living in the black rage. I knew that I was angry, I knew that I was sad and lonely, but I did not know that all of this was because one of the pet dragons inside me had woken up. I may enjoy my solitude but I do not like to be alone. By that, I mean the sort of alone where one is forgotten all but entirely. Ever since the tragic “I'm sorry, L'ici, I forgot to tell you that you could come of of the corner” incident, I've never liked that sort of alone, and the worst iteration of it is to be alone and forgotten in a massive throng of people, and so many of the lies that I believe without meaning to tie back to this sort of alone.

I remember the day that I was ten, and I was with someone whom I loved, and she was angry at something else. When she is angry or wounded, it is her habit to try to hurt me. I remember steeling myself against her words, because I knew what she was going to do, I knew by name the voice that she put on to say these things, I've found it in the mouths of other people, compulsive liars, and I've laughed at them for it. But her words still got in. “Nobody really likes you. They only put up with you because they're nice people. They're just being polite.” I don't think she remembers saying these things to me. It seems odd, because I remember everything, even what I had been thinking right up until their emergence: I had been thinking about clouds. I've chased these words out of my head a thousand times. But I still hear them sometimes echoing in the darkest hours of the night, howling through me like a despairing wind. And like the words to a witches spell, I forget who I am upon hearing them, and the best parts of me fall asleep.

One of the people who uses me as a vessel of wrath is obviously going through a difficult time just now. She has been lashing out at me, my father and the whole state of Colorado for some weeks now, all of which are chosen things for her to be nasty to, to be angry with and to loathe in that order. It is regrettable because this woman should be as a sister to me, and we ought to be spending our conversations in sisterly things. Instead I have to always be on my guard with her, lest I wake her ire, I must measure and weigh the things I say to her because if I slip up she'll probably shove it right back in my face, either angry at my person or gloating at my failures, and I am obliged to seek and find sisters elsewhere, whom God has graciously provided. I know what it means when she's like this, that she's battling dragons of her own and hers are very very big, but instead of sympathising, I've been lashing right back.

At work at the fast food restaurant, the powers that be will put me in a position, tell me that it's only temporary and then forget and leave me there for hour after hour. I hate that under any circumstances. If they'd only tell me that I'd be there for hours I could wrap my head around it, but to turn around every minute expecting to be replaced and put back where I belong is a bit wearing. On Thursday I started to get frostbite in my fingertips because they had me directing traffic “just for a minute” and I found after holding my hand up into the wind for half an hour that my fingers didn't hurt any more, they felt like heavy chunks of wood mistakenly attached to my palm (never experienced THAT before.) Then the following day I was sent into another position outside with the wind and the snow blowing up the sleeves of a coat that is too big for me, one where I cannot even wear gloves because I have to have my fingers free for writing and fingerless gloves look trashy, and instead of merely being annoyed and dealing with it, I got furious, and took it as a personal slight. Obviously something is wrong, and I think I've finally figured out what it is.

I am alone. When I used to solve my problems by hitting people, it seemed absurd that I would make it to 25 unmarried, without any children, without so much as a single relationship in history to look back on. I never once thought of it as a possibility. My great grandmother got married at 14, my grandmother got married at 16, my mother got married at 18. Imagine my bewilderment when I got to 21 and was still alone. Fortunately, my sister married at 20, so the pattern hasn't been broken, it just got carried elsewhere. It's just as well, because the chap that I fancied when I was 20 had already out-grown me, and was too non-confrontational to say so, and I don't think I should have liked to be married to him. There are not many gentlemen that I can imagine living with forever and still enjoying their company (the Calvinist in me is a very narrow bottleneck), there must be even fewer gentlemen who would enjoy my company, I'm quite eccentric and scarce are the people who have that particular a taste. Best not to worry about it, I suppose. This isn't the problem, it's just a factor.

I am alone. Through circumstances beyond anyone's control, my family is about 250 miles away, not a mere upstairs, or even halfway across town, which is where I used to think they would be right about now. The old house is gone, all those familiar things are gone, and I'm left behind in roughly the same place, still trying to sort out what to do next. I don't even know what will become of me this time next year. This isn't the problem, either, just another factor.

I am alone. Three years ago, I left my old church, where all my old, healthy roots were, and sought fellowship elsewhere. I found a place to be almost instantly, and brought my parents over with me. When my parents left, the congregation did not know what to do with me. I wandered in the background like a ghost, no thing of real substance unless they summoned me to ask how my parents have been doing. I would draw near to some and ask how they were, what sorts of interesting things had they been planning and doing and reading and seeing, they left my questions unanswered and would ask me how my parents were, and if I said that I did not care to talk about my parents, they emphasized their sincerity by listing their names and trying to remember the name of the town that they've moved to until I withdrew, hurt and a bit bitter, and wandered somewhere else. We used to talk about interesting things, everything from spiders to Presbyterianism, including how and why those two ideas are linked for me, but all that went away when I turned into a symbol of my missing family.

This widened the gaping wound of the absence of my family, and opened a new wound of isolation in my church, and when I found that I could not go to that place unless I be grief-stricken and deeply irked so that I did not even remember that morning's message, I thought perhaps that it was time to leave. So I left, and I think that this is what woke the dragon because between the loss of the family, wandering into the patronage of kind acquaintances to live, and letting go of the dead relationship with my old church, I've never been so alone in my life.

This is all deeply, uncomfortably personal, and it is the sort of thing that ought to be left in the word file that I originally write these things in because, should you have failed to realise thus far, this blog is essentially comprised of tidied up entries in a diary. I'm letting it out anyway because I know myself, and if I don't bare it, I'll hide the matter away and pretend that it isn't there. It will only come back again, worse than ever before. So, since it all has come out here, let me accomplish some other duties.

I am sorry for my cruelty and bitterness in these past months, whether you saw it or not. I am sorry for turning a stony, withered heart to all the things you've done for me and shared with me. I am sorry, friend and holy sister, for my callousness, and for not knowing the words to help you. Please forgive me.

I am in a new church now, and learning all over again how to lay down a foundation. I'm very bad at this, but praise God for the graciousness of other people; they're always so much better people than I am. Intriguingly, one of my students attends there, so I suppose I shall have to mind my p's and q's, but her constant delight at seeing me wander about her church is encouraging.

It is a good thing that the black rage often comes to light while sitting in a pew. The association between one church and another alone might have helped me make the connections I needed, but it is well that the hard realization of my wretched behaviour came on Sunday. On the one hand, one spends the better part of the time not quite paying attention to precisely the thing one has come for, but on the other hand, once one has returned to oneself, one returns to the light and glory, to remembering what one ought to be, and who one serves and why. Most of it eeked out of the corners of my eyes during the singing, sitting, standing and reciting part of the whole business, so that I caught the message and exhausted much of my dismay by doodling around the sermon notes. Today was communion Sunday, too, and especially rich coming out of all that darkness, apparently this new church uses real wine. You wouldn't think that it would make a difference, but it does. The whole experience is like the best part of childhood, a time when if you ever came to understand anything at all you understood it as clearly as red blood on white snow, there was simply no room for half-comprehension or partial-confusion. It was or it was not. Math was the only exception to this absolute, for even the Holy Trinity was plain as day, and I remember wondering what my pastor found so difficult about it. I was very bad at expressing what I knew, so many people tried to find new ways to make me understand the Trinty, and I often wondered why.

The light and the glory must be attributed to the good place God has once again landed me in. How dismal it would have been to finally come out of this darkness, only to be told that I am probably a bad husband and father, and a terrible encourager, and a stingy giver, and NO WONDER nobody loves me, and hear Christ mentioned only as the little curl on the end of a pig's tail, or the flourish of a signature at the end of a very long letter. I have been blessed.