This is actually a continuation on my therapist’s homework; which is stuff I have to do during the week when I’m not in the office. I think it gives me something to think about, which is nice. I like having something to think about that I find purposeful. I feel like I’ve spent the last several years thinking about things I shouldn’t be or thinking about fairly vapid and pointless mental exercises to keep me from thinking about those things, with periods of deeper pondering someplace along the way. I suppose that’s why I’ve blogged so much less frequently these past few months – I haven’t really had a whole lot to say, because I haven’t really been thinking; just existing.
So anyway, my homework for last week was a two-parter:
A) Identify life experiences, treatment, behaviors or things spoken over you by others that have made you feel emasculated.
B) How did you respond to that person or experience? How did you deal with your feelings? (grit your teeth & take it, swallow it & let it out later)
And this week’s homework: Write about part 2 of last week’s home work.
So let’s get it all out then, shall we? I feel like I’ll do a better job of it if I just write all of it from the get-go. Let’s begin.
Part A: Stuff that made me feel emasculated
1) My (first) wife leaving
That’ll take it out of you.
2) Her friend smirking as my (first) wife told me she was leaving
I never knew how much that two-second encounter hurt and bothered me; I remember it so very clearly, I remember every line and curve of her friend’s otherwise beautiful face, and I remember loud and clear the message it conveyed:
“You have lost the greatest thing you’ll ever have. You aren’t good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’re not successful enough. You’re not attractive enough. You’re not enough of a man to meet her needs. You are a fool. You are a loser. You aren’t worth of pity – you are trash to be disregarded, and you will never, ever amount to anything more.”
All this, with one sneer, in passing, on December 26th, 2003.
3) Being relentlessly bullied in grade school
I still know the names.
4) Being relentlessly bullied in junior high school
I still know the names.
5) Being picked on as a freshman and a sophomore in high school
I still know the names.
6) Being singled out & made fun in front of the entire band (by my director) in high school
I still know his name. Also, kind of where he lives. And which bike trails he rides on. And that he doesn't wear a helmet.
7) Having my (first) wife say mean things about me in front of large groups of people
Also, having her flirt shamelessly with other guys in front of me didn’t help either. I remember once she said (at a Halloween party, with our closest friends in attendance –while dressed provocatively in a short, tight Catholic schoolgirl outfit) that she wished she had a husband that other girls would be interested in flirting with. I told myself it was the wine she was drinking, but let’s face it – it was beyond devastating. I can still feel how hot my face became when she said that, and I can still feel that shame and embarrassment.
8) Losing my car to repossession
Not once, but three times. And I lost my wife’s car - twice.
9) Losing my house
That house represented a hope and a future, man – it was supposed to be the place I (and my wife) filled with kids, love, and family stuff. Those dreams? Gone.
10) Being evicted from our apartment
Less than 60 days after my wedding to my current wife, too. Merry Christmas - get out.
11) Having to move back into my parent’s house
Yay. I'm a little boy again - can I get a sucker and a diaper change ?
12) Having to sell things I loved and worked hard to get (my rifle & my Bronco)
Those things hurt to lose because they were mine, ya know? When I had to sell those things – for survival money – it was just one more instance of where I lost again; another instance where I didn’t get that I wanted after all; yet more proof I just can't win.
13) Not being able to take care of my wife and daughter financially
I don’t know much else that erodes your masculinity like this, man.
14) Having to give up my visitation days because I couldn’t feed my daughter
Hey - I found something after all!
15) Being completely and totally financially destroyed after doing your best
Fail.
16) Having to completely humble myself in 12-step recovery for my addiction
Dig up the most embarrassing, humiliating and shameful things you’ve ever done - the things you said you’d take to the grave with you. Now – tell them.
17) Having to apply for food stamps
Hey- you smell that? It’s me – I smell like poverty. Or it's the rotting corpse of my pride.
So - there's Part A.
Part B: How did I respond?
Yeah – I grit my teeth and took it, man. I swallowed my pride, my anger, my innate desire to stick up for myself, my dignity and my self-respect. I “let it go” - isn’t that what good Christians did? Forgive others? Turn the other cheek? Love thine enemies? Show them kindness and heap burning coals upon their heads?
Or, in the case of my wife, love her sacrificially, as Christ loved the church? Loving her in spite of everything she did, anxiously awaiting the day the prodigal child would return?
Or I stuffed it down really deep – and I mean really fucking deep – and let it out later. I let out the stress, if not the anger, through medicating myself when I was an addict, or when I was a bouncer I’d take it out on whomever I determined needed it. There’s not a club I worked at where I wasn’t told that I needed to “take it a little easier” on people, and I worked at no fewer than six clubs. The anger manifested itself in my language (it still does from time to time). I stewed. I fumed. I plotted revenge, mayhem and death, but ultimately never acted on it, thereby adding my already profound sense of impotence, thereby worsening the cycle. Revenge is mine, saith not the LORD? I will repay? Never fast enough for me, though, and never meted out in doses I could appreciate.
Later on, until recently, I took my anger out in whatever object might be close at hand.
Gun parts, computer printers, flashlights, doors (at home and at work), a shovel, pictures of loved ones, shelving units, a concrete birdbath, office equipment and furniture, a bedroom wall, glasses, jars, plates, a $300 vacuum cleaner, an entire bedroom of furniture, $500 worth of paintball gear – all destroyed in fits of rage.
Oh – and one marriage, too - the one I promised God if He was gracious enough to give me I promised not to screw up.
I’d seethe & vent and rant and speak bitterly, harshly to my wife; condescendingly and viciously, angrily, coldly – not at all like Christ speaks to us. And man – I just couldn’t make it stop. I felt like that once a button had been pushed, there was no stopping it, there was absolutely no turning it off, no diffusing it, no matter how hard or desperately I tried to turn it, redirect it, snuff it out, take it captive in the name of Christ – nothing. Do you get this? Nothing, man. And it would build and build and build until I would swear before Almighty God I had to break something or hit somebody or I wouldn’t survive. And since I knew that hitting my wife wasn’t an option, I would choose something inanimate to destroy, sometimes with a thin thread of logic, or sometimes out of convenience, and the destruction would continue until the adrenaline would wear off, fatigue would set in and I was too tired to go on.
In later weeks, after abandoning pastoral counseling for professional, I would learn that a frequent trigger for some (but not all) of these rages was an underlying sense of helplessness, the sense that I was powerless to act or rectify the situation at hand. But through acting out in anger, I felt powerful; I felt that oh so necessary release, and I felt like I was by-God doing something. I was acting, I wasn't merely standing by and letting things happen to me, I was fucking doing something about it. Anything – to alleviate that sense of helplessness and powerlessness, usually with little or no clear memory of what occured while I was raging, and no thought to the consequences, or whom I was hurting.
I wasn’t always like this, man – or maybe I was. I internalized a LOT of anger when I was a kid, as a teen. I swallowed a lot of rage along the way, thinking that it was the Right Thing To Do, and it was What Jesus Would Do. Jesus never lashed out (except at the money changers in the temple, but never at those who persecuted Him.) Stephen, who was being stoned, for God’s sake (ha – get it?) asked God to forgive the people stoning him, so who was *I* to stick up for myself when THEY weren’t doing it? And man – I took this to heart in a big way. It became my way of dealing with bullies, other kids, eventually other adults, and hey – eventually, my first wife. How Christ-like was that, huh?
Today it became clear to me that I let a lot of that emotion out through medicating, or acting out in my addiction. While I rarely, if ever, used it to cope with anger directly, I know the acting out and medicating took a lot of the stress away. I think I learned that somewhere in high school; how the release helped; helped me cope, helped me relax, helped me see more clearly, gain perspective, feel better – everything medicating should do, but doesn’t – not really, not for long, and then it’s time to medicate again.
In a way, it was probably a good thing I was an addict. It probably took enough stress off of me to let me survive, to cope, to keep from killing myself or somebody else. It’s sad, but I don’t think it’s completely untrue. It was the only outlet I really had, albeit a secret, unhealthy and ultimately detrimental one. But it let me cope, and that’s something, especially when I had no other way to cope. You know what the difference is between me and those school shooters in Colorado, Arkansas and California? Not much, man – it could have been me. It could have been me. You guys can probably thank the Holy Spirit for that one.
So what do I do now? I tend to run a lot more than I used to. A few weeks ago I walked six miles to bleed off the anger. I do pushups, sit-ups, jumping jacks and stretch. I play softball, and when I play softball I don’t think about anything – I just play. I don’t know if or when I’ll play paintball again – I have some stuff I’ll have to replace first. I also read a lot more, too. I pick up used books at garage sales and read them. I think I’ve read five novels in the past three weeks. Reading helps.
I make it a point NOT to yell at my wife, and to disengage and leave when I get angry. I don’t think I’m as angry as I used to be, but odds are it’s still there someplace, lurking. Hiding. Waiting. So I watch for it, and *I* wait.
So, I don’t know much else to write. I know I’m “better” now than I was when I first started counseling. I’m not sure what the point was of this, really, other than to perhaps solidify what I did in response to those feelings. I know I internalized them, buried them, and medicated them through acting out o through rage. I guess the next part is figuring out what I can do instead of doing those things. I guess anything is an improvement, huh?
OK – I think that’s enough for now. Have a cat.
Hah - that's contextually much creepier than I meant it to be. Sorry for the unfortunate choice.
