Anger Mismanagement

I’ve been unwell with a cold virus.

It’s been waking me up in the night with a persistent tickly cough that feels like it’s rattling the brain in my skull like the meat inside a cheap sausage roll.

I’ve been lethargic and disinterested in everything.

One day this week I took to the sofa aimlessly flicking through channels until happening upon an episode of “Inspector Morse” first aired in the early 1990s when the screen ratios were different and everyone looked as if they’d been slightly flattened which felt particularly in step with my own malaise.

Worst of all though might have been what it did to my anger, something usually easily controlled.

A question posed during a board game a couple of Christmases ago,

“Which player at the board is most likely to wake up with a smile on their face?”

Everyone said it was me which I have treasured as one of the loveliest things I’ve heard from my family.

Fast forward to this week.

“Shut the fuck up,” I yell from the driver’s seat at the dog who is in the back of the car barking at another dog walking along the road with her owner. She’d spent the preceding walk barking at every dog she’d come across and I’d reached the end of my tether.

I immediately feel ashamed at my outburst and apologise to the dog who seems unaware of any disruption and is easily placated by a Bonio.

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”

I once read that quote on an osteopath’s ceiling and although it’s true right now I feel like thumping whoever said it squarely in the jaw.

A client cancels to my great relief and I celebrate with two large swigs from a bottle of Benylin that went out of date in 2019.

I think of myself as more pathetic than most people are when they are ill and that perceived weakness creates anger, an emotion I also find hard to accept in myself, so I slowly descend into a self-defeating cycle of criticism.

Ignoring my body and pushing relentlessly forwards I hang out the washing and, when the last peg is secured, the line snaps leaving everything lying on the sodden muddy ground.

Meanwhile, I can’t get the dog from underneath the bush I don’t know the name of where I know she is eating shit deposited by the cats from next door that are another regular and reliable source of my ire.

It is only much later in the day when I have thought again about the wisdom of pushing myself harder in directions that my physical body doesn’t feel like going that I begin to connect with a little self-compassion.

“It’s OK to get angry once in a while.”

“You’re sick and it sucks.”

“Mostly you’ve just shouted at and berated yourself.”

“No harm done.”

I don’t know where the kindness comes from but I’m glad to find it within me.

It feels better to put an arm around myself and I sit for a while looking through some of the too many books I bought after reading a list of recommendations from writer Holly Whitaker.

One of them is by Pema Chodron who wrote this,

″What may appear to be an arrow or a sword we can actually experience as a flower. Whether we experience what happens to us as obstacle and enemy or as teacher and friend depends entirely on our perception of reality. It depends on our relationship with ourselves.″

I order a new washing line and have a cup of tea and a biscuit with the dogs on the sofa. I’m still angry with next door’s cats but it feels like progress.