Intricate ways of blowing off old anger

When I’m angry, I don’t shout, I don’t shake my firsts or stomp. I write about it. If I have to carry it for several days without writing, I get antsy. If I carry it for weeks, I push it down really hard and swallow it. If I carry it for years, I guess I suppress it even more. I have so much anger suppressed at this point that at any opportunity to blow it off I feel it bubbling up to the surface, steaming out through my lips, yet I still hold it. I’ve realized where and how I blow it only recently – I try to find the right cause.

If someone is being penalized unjustly (in my view), I speak up and tend to go all the way – for the right cause. You can’t stop me – I’m fearless. One day I went to see some vampire movie with my daughter – it was bloody and gory. A pair of young parents took their toddler to watch it. The entire movie my anger was building up. What are they thinking, taking a him here? At 9pm? Barely talking? When the movie was over, I marched over to them and told them how bad this is for their kid, and as a mother I felt they needed to know that. Was I right to do that? No. Accusing people publicly never leads to anything good, especially to helping them. The mother was white, the father African-American – the little boy was very cute and hyper. It ended in the father shouting at me, telling me that his kid was all right, showing me a wad of cash, until the security guy showed up and I tried explaining how I created all this mess. My daughter stood aside, embarrassed. I told her later I wasn’t ever going to stand by on the sidewalk watching something happening and not taking action. I told her I have been through enough to be quiet. I told her I cared for community. She didn’t buy it. She was right. I did mean all those things, but in reality it was my anger at work – my anger at my parents not raising me the proper way – transferred onto innocent strangers.

One other time, my daughter told me the teacher warned her about taking her cell phone away from her, for using it during the break. I told her that if she does that, I will go and turn the entire school upside down, because it is not school’s property, and I have the right to know where my child is, at any time. She loved my response, but I realize only now where it came from – from the anger of having my things taken away from me, when I was little. I have issues with any authorities, in general, and it stems from that.

When I feel a coworker is being unjustly cornered, and if that coworker is under my management, you watch out – I turn into a tigress, I will rip apart anyone who tries to touch my people, to hurt them in any way, to not give them what they deserve. Do I need this drama in the workplace? I don’t, but I can’t help it – it’s the anger from not being taken care of that I project onto an intruder – again, an intruder in my mind.

I have to vent it all out, it eats me from inside out. How? I have to acknowledge it – I am angry, and I’m angry at my parents. This has been the hardest part – I’m still working on it. I’m not an angry person, how can I be? I am. I am angry. I am very angry. But it’s ok, it will come out and it will pass. I now need to find a safe way for it to leave my body.