An Attempt to Reconcile with The Rage (Revised)
I no longer have doubts that pop culture and t.v. have been my primal and soul guiders for the majority of my life. It's funny that my earliest memory is being scared to watch the Def Leppard video "Pour Some Sugar On Me" because the one-armed drummer always gave me nightmares. Don't ask me why a one-armed man is scary...
I have had an almost two year old dilemma that I have been struggling with and I thought that I would share it. It is at this point that I should issue a brief warning: I am not in the mood to work for the 'big words' to come into my roaming little mind today. As a result, I am more than sure that a fair amount of the 'naughty' words will be spoken in this post. If your eyes will burn from the insult, please move on.
Back to the dilemma...Most people would tell you that I used to have an abundance of ego. I was pretty sure that I was the most amazing thing in the world and I also equipped myself with a sharp tongue so that any person that got in my way would quickly wish they had never crossed my path. There is more than one person who would attest to my temper. I am also sure that there is more than one person that still hates me because of this. But that's the thing: at the time, I didn't care. You either were or weren't important to me. You either worshipped me or you got the hell out of my way. The weird thing is that when you act like that, there are actually a ton of people who are stupid enough to hang around you just because they want to see you go nuts and fly off the handle...this in and of itself is a foreign concept now. It seems like all of the sudden I woke up and the Feelings Fairy took off with my fucking mojo. At some point, I came to the sick realization that the things I said might actually hurt someone else's feelings. Most people at this point would tell me that maybe I was just growing up. I would like to momentarily ignore this statement. Somehow, for damn sure it was unintentional, I went through this ridiculous "spiritual" journey where I learned that all people deserve to be respected and that all people should struggle to take control of their lives and that the way we control our lives and our destinies is by owning our actions. While this may seem really trivial, it is amazing how many people don't grasp this concept. AND IT IS WITH THAT IN MIND, that I would like to throw a brief shout out to Dr. Phil. That son of a bitch was kind enough to teach me responsibility and I can see that he must have forgotten to teach the rest of the damn world because I am the only person who bought that bullshit. I wrote in my self-discovery journal and I meditated on my defining moments, and at the end of the day, I was the only one searching out my feelings. Everybody else was watching Seinfeld.
Time passed on and I started my dream job, and you know what happens now? I take responsibility. I try to tell the truth. I try to be kind. I try to compromise. I try to understand people. I make excuses for other people's poor or strange behavior. And I do this because I hold to the hope that all of us must be fragile. That all of us are trying to make this world better. What do I get in return? High School Drama. And no, the irony of the fact that I work in a high school in the theatre department is not lost on me. There is someone in this world who would read this and say that I am a better person for being kind. Say that I am making some kind of positive effort. There are probably even more people that are wondering what exactly it is that I am crying about, but for right now I wish the positivity police would jump off my back so that I could go back to being pissed off. And then I would find those people and tell them to take me to the fucking fairy that stole my anger. It is literally draining me of all of my energy to be as angry as I am now. I'm having to listen to really crappy music, just to keep focused on the anger. I just want to go back. I just want to say, what I want when I want, and to hell with the emotional damage that it may cause. I want The Rage back. It seems like an irrational request, but at least I wouldn't spend the majority of my adult life like the way I am now, which is feeling like a tool. Feeling like a victim to lies, manipulation, and gossip. Feeling like the majority of the people I deal with are the ones who snuggle themselves to sleep at night with the lie that they tell to themselves about how they are truly better than those with whom they would betray. I MISS THE ILLUSION. At the same time, my ever so special Feelings Fairy tells me to abandon The Rage. She holds a drop of sunshine in her hand and has smiley face stickers on her shirt. I hate her so much. I want my cigarette smoking, too tragic to deal with you, authority bucking mojo to return. She's the one I miss. She's the one who doesn't have to scrub the toilets and the bathtub in the morning. She doesn't have to pull down the poorly hung Halloween decorations. She's the time of my life that I never get to go back to. I think I will call her Adolescence.
All that being said, I would just like to add that I knew that t.v. was controlling most of my life when I had a dilemma as pressing as the one that seems to be nagging me now and the best reference I have to explain to you what I am going through is from the movie "Hope Floats" when people keep telling Birdie that she needs to be audacious and bold like she used to be. Thank you Sandra Bullock and famous-country-singer-who-I-can't-think-of-your-name. Thank you for leaving me with such an intellectually satisfying way to generate a metaphor for my life.
Homer Simpson: In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.
I have had an almost two year old dilemma that I have been struggling with and I thought that I would share it. It is at this point that I should issue a brief warning: I am not in the mood to work for the 'big words' to come into my roaming little mind today. As a result, I am more than sure that a fair amount of the 'naughty' words will be spoken in this post. If your eyes will burn from the insult, please move on.
Back to the dilemma...Most people would tell you that I used to have an abundance of ego. I was pretty sure that I was the most amazing thing in the world and I also equipped myself with a sharp tongue so that any person that got in my way would quickly wish they had never crossed my path. There is more than one person who would attest to my temper. I am also sure that there is more than one person that still hates me because of this. But that's the thing: at the time, I didn't care. You either were or weren't important to me. You either worshipped me or you got the hell out of my way. The weird thing is that when you act like that, there are actually a ton of people who are stupid enough to hang around you just because they want to see you go nuts and fly off the handle...this in and of itself is a foreign concept now. It seems like all of the sudden I woke up and the Feelings Fairy took off with my fucking mojo. At some point, I came to the sick realization that the things I said might actually hurt someone else's feelings. Most people at this point would tell me that maybe I was just growing up. I would like to momentarily ignore this statement. Somehow, for damn sure it was unintentional, I went through this ridiculous "spiritual" journey where I learned that all people deserve to be respected and that all people should struggle to take control of their lives and that the way we control our lives and our destinies is by owning our actions. While this may seem really trivial, it is amazing how many people don't grasp this concept. AND IT IS WITH THAT IN MIND, that I would like to throw a brief shout out to Dr. Phil. That son of a bitch was kind enough to teach me responsibility and I can see that he must have forgotten to teach the rest of the damn world because I am the only person who bought that bullshit. I wrote in my self-discovery journal and I meditated on my defining moments, and at the end of the day, I was the only one searching out my feelings. Everybody else was watching Seinfeld.
Time passed on and I started my dream job, and you know what happens now? I take responsibility. I try to tell the truth. I try to be kind. I try to compromise. I try to understand people. I make excuses for other people's poor or strange behavior. And I do this because I hold to the hope that all of us must be fragile. That all of us are trying to make this world better. What do I get in return? High School Drama. And no, the irony of the fact that I work in a high school in the theatre department is not lost on me. There is someone in this world who would read this and say that I am a better person for being kind. Say that I am making some kind of positive effort. There are probably even more people that are wondering what exactly it is that I am crying about, but for right now I wish the positivity police would jump off my back so that I could go back to being pissed off. And then I would find those people and tell them to take me to the fucking fairy that stole my anger. It is literally draining me of all of my energy to be as angry as I am now. I'm having to listen to really crappy music, just to keep focused on the anger. I just want to go back. I just want to say, what I want when I want, and to hell with the emotional damage that it may cause. I want The Rage back. It seems like an irrational request, but at least I wouldn't spend the majority of my adult life like the way I am now, which is feeling like a tool. Feeling like a victim to lies, manipulation, and gossip. Feeling like the majority of the people I deal with are the ones who snuggle themselves to sleep at night with the lie that they tell to themselves about how they are truly better than those with whom they would betray. I MISS THE ILLUSION. At the same time, my ever so special Feelings Fairy tells me to abandon The Rage. She holds a drop of sunshine in her hand and has smiley face stickers on her shirt. I hate her so much. I want my cigarette smoking, too tragic to deal with you, authority bucking mojo to return. She's the one I miss. She's the one who doesn't have to scrub the toilets and the bathtub in the morning. She doesn't have to pull down the poorly hung Halloween decorations. She's the time of my life that I never get to go back to. I think I will call her Adolescence.
All that being said, I would just like to add that I knew that t.v. was controlling most of my life when I had a dilemma as pressing as the one that seems to be nagging me now and the best reference I have to explain to you what I am going through is from the movie "Hope Floats" when people keep telling Birdie that she needs to be audacious and bold like she used to be. Thank you Sandra Bullock and famous-country-singer-who-I-can't-think-of-your-name. Thank you for leaving me with such an intellectually satisfying way to generate a metaphor for my life.
Homer Simpson: In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic.
posted by Unequivocal_Prowess at 9:54 PM
3 Comments:
I think the attitude you're talking about is admirable. However, I think you can cut yourself some slack. Flying off the handle every once in a while is necessary. And honestly- it makes being a nice, understanding, forgiving person the rest of the time much easier.
I agree.
And he knows what he's talking about because 'flying off the handle' is one of his passtimes.
In my case, I'd say it's more of an extreme sport. :)
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