Anger is an energy

I’m definitely getting back to my old self. I know that because our town’s traffic is making me angry again. I feel in my heart of hearts that our town has the worst drivers per capita in all of the Midwest. Turn signal? What’s that? 4-way stops? Who goes next? Flashing lights? Whaaaa? And don’t even get me started with the roundabouts.

This was always something that annoyed me, and by the time I was on my way home from whatever errand I was running I think my blood was boiling and the ‘ol BP was on it’s way to skyscraper highs. Annoyed, frustrated, exhausted, and full of contempt for folks that never should have been issued a drivers license in the first place.

Fast forward to my post-hospital existence and didn’t really have that fire in me to be mad. I was just too thankful to be out of the hospital and doing better, my blood pressure back to normal, human levels and I wasn’t filling full of fluid. I had no reason to be angry, about anything really. Just happy to be home and not worrying my wife, kids, and family. Life was too short to spend it agitated because of some random person in a car that nearly caused a wreck because they don’t know how to use a turn signal, or because they coasted thru a stop sign.

Last night that changed.

My wife and I were driving into town to a meeting/dinner. It’s something we do monthly where someone hosts it and talks about different facets of the environment; whether it be clean water practices, environmentally-sound farming practices, or healthy shorelines. It’s related to what my wife does, which is working for a non-profit called The Watershed Foundation. She gets to make connections and I get a meal out of it. Plus, dinner with my wife.

Anyways, driving into town after 5pm has always been a hassle and as usual the idiot drivers were out. I felt that similar feeling of anger rising in me as people didn’t use turn signals, or just sat at a 4-way when it was their turn to go. But there was something different about that feeling of annoyance. It wasn’t taking over in me like it usually did. It wasn’t one of those angers that turns one into a yelling, barking mad-person behind the wheel. It felt tempered. It felt controlled. It felt like some inner ball of strength that I could control unlike how anger used to affect me.

I guess between the BP and heart meds -along with the Prozac- my anger has been tamed to a feeling of mild annoyance with a dose of amusement. Instead of getting pissed off I almost made myself laugh at my own reaction. It felt good. I felt in control of that rage that would usually get the best of me, or just work my brain up into a tizzy.

I come from a long line of tempers on both sides of my family. My mom’s dad was like a Steinbeck character, growing up with a bunch of wily brothers and dipping into whiskey till he was ready to walk into a bar just to fight. Fortunately that behavior subsided once he became a father(or shortly after.) While my dad’s dad was a featherweight boxer in Chicago. He was a hard worker that never wanted to work for anyone. He was the type that wanted to do everything but what he was actually good at(he was a CPA, but never made money from it.) He worked at car dealerships, ran his own for a short time(Hubner Chevrolet in Lagrange, IN), and even had his own building trades business(a precursor to Lowes, Home Depot, and Menards). He would drive a flatbed pickup truck down to a train yard where he would empty an entire rail car of wood, tools, hardware, and 100lb bags of cement.

Both of them had tempers, and you didn’t want to be at the opposite end of them. Fortunately by the time I rolled around they were both older, wiser, and calmer. But I’d see that temper in my dad, and my mom. They were not to be messed with. Of course being the part-time brat that I was my mom and I would argue a lot because I didn’t know when to shut my trap. Of course it was because we were so alike. Not to say we didn’t get along because we did, but we knew how to push each other’s buttons.

I rarely did that with my dad. He was 6’4″, lifted weights in the basement and I wasn’t going to push my luck.

Anger for the most part is a useless emotion. You waste energy being mad at something that usually is out of your control. Or at the very least it’s something you brought on yourself. But anger is also a motivator. You’re pissed at your job because it’s a terrible job, so anger pushes you to find something new. Maybe you start school late in life and start over again. That’s a positive aspect of anger. Of course, anger will also make you say things and do things in the heat of the moment that you will regret later. I guess that’s just the human aspect of it. You lose your shit and then instantly regret it.

Even before the health scare and meds I’d tempered that anger and my quick act to say something in the heat of the moment. When I turned 40 I didn’t want to continue down that path of quick quips and snarky replies. At 40 is when I started to see my parents in a way that felt more distanced. The snark and sarcasm weren’t funny to me, but more so sharp jabs that hurt. Don’t think that I don’t love my parents because I absolutely do. They are the reason I am who I am, and part of that is seeing certain aspects of their behavior and reactions in certain situations and not wanting to bring that into my relationships. It took awhile to get there, but I did arrive. And now being medicated and calmer than I’ve been in years I’m even more happy I’d figured it out so much sooner.

My pharmaceutically-induced temperament is just another superpower I didn’t know I was missing until I discovered it.