baby steps

I've learned a lot about myself lately.

Mostly ugly things, which is not a self-pitying declaration but really a statement of fact. Specifically things about my temper. I was an angry little kid and I've grown up to be an angry adult (ish? young adult? 20-something?); the only difference is that I don't have anyone I unleash on very often. That's really only because I don't live with my family anymore. As a kid, my brother and I had knock-down-drag-out fights until we were both way too old to have an excuse. (Incidentally, he's been a douchebag almost the whole time he's been in Washington on leave, ignoring my parents in favor of some stripper 'ho, and I feel that same old violent anger boiling inside me. But now he knows jujitsu and I can't do anything to him.) I got into screaming matches with my parents, which have thankfully become rarer, but they still happen.

And I know, in recent years, it's kind of gotten to be a silly thing; when I was a trainee, I punched John & Erik all the time for being obnoxious little twerps & for intentionally pushing my buttons, and it's become good fodder for teasing. And that's fine. I don't punch anyone in Yakima; haven't gotten to know them well enough yet, I suppose. (I'm moving in with three boys in three weeks, though, and I imagine that'll change pretty soon.) At any rate, it seems it's become endearing — "Oh, Molly, she just gets so worked up over little things" — rather than seen as something serious or damaging.

But despite any outward appearances to the contrary, that temper of mine is still lightning-quick, still present just beneath the surface, ready to come out snarling at a moment's notice. That's how it feels: like an animal of some kind, snarling and snapping, "the jaws that bite and the claws that catch." And, as with all our animal feelings, our baser urges, there's some pleasure in giving into the anger. There's a part of me — a really big part, I think — that wants to wallow or bask in that rage, give myself fully over to my anger, and just refuse to listen to the more moderate voices in my head. This past week, I spent hours upon hours thinking of all the most spiteful things I could say, and as a writer, I knew I could use words as weapons to pinpoint a friend's most vulnerable spots and make her feel worthless and alone. And I relished it. I was looking forward to the moment when I'd get to pull out these carefully practiced hateful speeches, when I'd get to see her face fall in dismay when she learned "the truth" about herself.

That's where I was when I headed to Ghormley this weekend, a place that's supposed to be focused on God and nature and love and childhood and fun. It's hard to be sullen at Ghormley, and I was able to throw myself into playing with the girls in my cabin, but God wasn't content to leave my heart out of the picture. Boy, did I fight it. I sat there Friday night and well into Saturday morning just revisiting all my hateful thoughts, building them up again, not letting myself forget the hurt and anger I felt, which ultimately meant I had to tune out or neatly exempt myself from a lot of what was being said and sung.

I finally let my anger ebb away, more for convenience's sake and because it took too much energy than out of any altruistic realization of my wrongs. I'm still working on that one. The weekend was wonderful, as Ghormley always is, and that friendship is teetering a bit less precariously than it was last week.

But the whole episode just brought me back to an idea Kaetochi and I talked about recently, and something I've been finding in a lot of different places in life: Being mature is just a series of small decisions to not be immature. It's not some big switch that gets pulled when you're 18 that makes you lose any urge to be a jerk to the people around you; it's a conscious, constant effort. And it's hard. This is nothing earth-shattering or new, here, but it's newly-remembered for me. I dealt with this when I did the juice fast, too — the "slow, slow, steady process of self-denial." It's remembering in each moment that you have a choice between caving to those baser urges, which usually hurt you or the people around you, and actively pursuing the high road. God's road.

Where does this leave a stubborn jerk like me? It's more than scary. This realization means that I'm in control of my emotions. Usually, I unconsciously assume that my emotions are somehow independent of my brain, and if they take control over me, I'm just a helpless prisoner. Not so. My emotions can only get the better of me when I let them ... which means that every time my emotions get the better of me, it was deliberate surrender on my part that allowed it to happen.

The good news, I guess, is that God's supposed to help with this ... but the ongoing bad news is that I don't think I really trust him to do that. In words, perhaps, but it doesn't come out in how I live my life. Stubborn, independent, hot-tempered and reveling in it; how's that for a winning combination?

Anyway. I think I lost my point somewhere in there, so I'll stop. Hopefully, this week I'll be able to rein in my temper, for the benefit of all involved.

Love always,
molly