Most people who know or have known me have never seen me angry. Have never seen me lose the rag, curse at someone with real venom or thump my fist against the desk in uncontrollable fury.
They’ve seen me roll my eyes, blow out a big exasperated breath or make a face that’s expressing a can you believe this? look.
My wife’s about the only person who’s seen me lose it.
My son will get nipped by my anger after eight or eight-thirty in the evening if he’s dragging his heels about going to or staying in bed.
I don’t or haven’t yelled or screamed at extended family, at friends, at people in work or clients or guests.
To some, I may seem a study in patience, temperance and composure.
It may seem like I have this Zen Buddhist cloak that keeps me even-keel.
The truth is not so evolved.
I just don’t know how to be angry. I don’t know how to express frustration.
And because I don’t have any non-threatening or socially acceptable ways to manifest my inner turmoil at unfolding events, I bury it.
I’m afraid of getting angry in a place I’ve never been angry before. It’s like there are these fragile glass walls around me that keep up the image of who I believe myself to be in certain places and to get angry would create a sonic boom effect and shattered the whole shebang.
Imagine if this persona I’d built up over all these years – my reputation, my brand, all that I do to show through my words and actions what I stand for – was blown apart in a moment of unedited rage?
Pain, anger, disappointment, dismay are things I am often incapable or expressing.
I ask myself in moments of constrained rationalism, What’s the purpose of getting angry here and now? What will it achieve? And mostly, What might I do or say that will be impossible to take back?
If you don’t know already, I have an issue around irrevocability.
To do something I can’t take back, that changes everything, forever.
I’m a fence sitter. A diplomat. I need to leave enough of me on the table so that I can come back and face up tomorrow to do this all again.
Anger.
Getting angry.
Being angry.
Having people around me see me angry and the uncertainty that would produce in them about what I will do and or say.
Nope. Not gonna happen.
So, in it all goes, all inside, burying it down with a prayer hoping it never surfaces.
Maybe it’s Bill Bixby’s fault – he played Bruce Banner in the TV series, The Hulk. Maybe there’s a Hulk in all of us. I’ve never come to terms with mine and so down it does, despite the signs directing to avoid oncoming danger.
Maybe I should start saying that line when I feel the anger build: Don’t make me angry. You won’t like me when I’m angry.
Thanks, Bill.
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