Aggression

A few days ago I wandered out to the beach close to midnight in search of a good chat with the ocean. I have been feeling a bit down about things and I thought I'd experiment with seeing if I could get my tear ducts working at all. I've been trying to do this every now and again since some folks have told me how unhealthy it is that I cry as little as I do. Never-the-less I sat on a log and tried to break through those old guards I bypassed in the beginning of April at the Wailing Ritual but got nothing.

I felt a stone in my heart sitting there and knew I was going about releasing whatever need releasing the wrong way. As was my experience in the Mankind Project weekend I didn't need "a good cry" at all, I needed to fucking scream my lungs out. Take note that this recognition was a secondary realization to a passive expulsion method.

The log I was sitting on was in front of a row of homes. Surely I couldn't go yelling at midnight in front of these sleeping houses, so I moved on down the beach closer to the bluffs that would block the sound. This stone in me was pushing its way up now and anxious to get out now that it had been realized. It took a few minutes for me to get to a spot in which I felt I wouldn't disturb anyone with my beastial shouts and screams before I felt I could appropriately conduct such behavior. My first scream was pathetic.

I was self conscious, concerned by the reactions of others, concerned about disturbing anyone in their slumber. This isn't nice time, this is fucking yelling time. This is the time to say who gives a fuck if I wake everyone and their mother in the middle of the night with cries of bloody murder... and soon I was screaming with gusto. I shouted gutturally, I growled, jumped flailing my arms and legs, swung at the air and beat the beach with my fist. I screamed until I was hoarse in my throat and kept on as I felt layers of my esophagus strip away.

After a good ten or fifteen minutes of this I climbed the towering roots of a fallen tree by the bluffs and sat on a prong over looking the sea. I felt immensely better as I sat there still literally growling in my throat. I realized what I need most in my life at this moment is to make noise, to make my presence known, heard, and felt. This is not at all my normal state of being.

Over the years it has often been noted and questioned how little I show anger. Todd in particular often questioned it, and I think was part of a great frustration with me when we finally stopped traveling together last summer. On a road trip back from Eugene last week Allie also grew frustrated with my lack of angry reaction to her advances to start a fight with me. These are just recent examples of how my lack of showing anger have been harmful rather than helpful.

While I sat on my tree root I started really addressing this. I had never seen it as a problem before. I had always felt a great pride at my sense of tolerance and patience with others. I thought that maybe I excelled at being patient in the face of aggression towards me, and that tolerance would help bring about more understanding between those I relate to. Looking at my most recent interaction with Allie and how my lack of reaction worsened things deeply rather than allowing her to vent frustrations without repercussion had me giving this life long view another visit.

Growing up, I've said on here before, my bedroom was directly above a very active night time kitchen. The kitchen was generally active with my parents yelling at one another, mostly my Dad yelling at my Mom. My Dad showed a lot of tantrum-like, unfocused anger when his frustrations popped. My Mom in response was generally intolerantly silent in response. Seething with frustrated anger that went unchanneled. She and I have always been quite alike in personality.

My Mom and I have generally been the diplomatists among people. We both have a genuine patience and tolerance for acting out behavior, even when its against us. We tend to let it pass over us, then later revisit that issue when everything has calmed down and hash out whatever that issue was. Contrary to most accusations against my lack of anger, I don't let things go unheeded. I do address them, I simply don't address them in the heat of an argument because its always been my feeling that nothing can be resolved while basking in anger because neither side seems to really listen to what's said at that point.

My Dad, for all his tantrums, never seemed to get anything resolved. All I saw was that with every yelling match the fabric of our family just tore and tore a little more until it ripped itself to pieces. Eventually everyone ended up scattered to their corner of the country with no one talking to the other for years on end, and only now, 20 years after the initial split, are we starting to regroup.

Sitting on my elevated root thinking about all this I remembered something my Mom had said to me during one of her frustrating bouts with men on a whole. She told me she wanted to get fat. She wanted to take up space, be a presence that couldn't be ignored. She said she didn't want to be the skinny little thing men want that is tiny and unobstructing. I thought that was an interesting way to look at why thin women are appealing to men.

I find myself these days feeling similarly. I have always been an amicable personality with most everyone I meet. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a push over. I've definitely stood up for myself when directly attacked, but I have always stood up for myself in my own way. My aggression for holding on to my space has always been through action rather than speaking up. Pissy behavior that says don't fuck with me, rather than simply saying, don't fuck with me.

When Allie was yelling at me the other day she was literally telling me she wanted to see me angry, she wanted to start a fight with me. I noticed my reaction was that I wanted to get angry with her back because that was what she wanted, but I couldn't find any genuine anger with her to give. I was frustrated with her, and I told her that directly, but I felt like I could see what was going on with her and felt no anger about it. My problem in fights and arguments is usually that; I empathize too quickly to the other side as well as my own. I'm left with no solution for the disagreement but no will do to anything other than defend my own space while under attack.

Todd is convinced there is a deep well of anger inside me that has yet to be tapped. He has told me straight out that he is waiting for the day for my top to blow, a scene in which he expects to see an explosion rivaling the eruption of Krakatoa. A few others along the way have said similar things, but as I've searched in myself at length I genuinely don't find an unexpressed repressed anger that's just gathering steam before a blow. I have tried to find this lost anger, but I just don't think its there.

There is, however, a need in me for aggression which these bouts with screaming into the air are attached to. I'm only now starting to see these strings and follow where they are connected to me. I have a bad habit of allowing people more space than I should. As Todd notes, I have a bit of a martyrdom complex. Cede my own territory in whatever form to allow others the space for them to breathe and heal. This seems to be most visible in my romantic relationships which generally last a few months.

Allie and I have been dating about three months now, and that seems to be the thresh hold of when the heavy metals of my self imposed resentments need to be dumped. Outside of Ingrid and Stu my relationships tend to last anywhere between two and a half to four months. My relationship with Ingrid survived a year from my sabotage because I was daring myself to be in a long term committed relationship, and we were open which allowed a pressure valve to my need to martyr. Stu, on the other hand, found a psychological hold on me that had me attacking myself for seven months daring me to continue on as a challenge.

Looking at my relationship behavior I can easily see that within a month or so of being involved with someone I tend to cede most of my priorities, without recognizing it, to their needs, not only without them asking, but without them wanting me to. One more month or two seems to go by before I recognize anything of this, then the last month is spent forming an argument to myself that the relationship will not work in the end so I should just let them go now. All of this remains internal, with only little conversations here and there to provide hints.

I say all this because it illustrates how internal I am and speaks loudly to the need for me to finally be external. Not only to be fair to others, but to be fair to myself at long last. This, I think, is that boxed anger that's being referred to. It only blows in relationships, and quietly at that, because that's when its most concentrated. With friendships things are generally not confined to such close quarters. Allie and I have talked at length about how we each love and value our own space, but for whatever reason I've gone ahead and ignored that anyway.

After an hour or so of sitting up on my seaside root throne thinking about these things, still gurgling in my throat and breathing loudly, I felt much more solid as I did after that last weekend in April. Todd had asked me, after hearing about my experience at the Mankind Project, if I could access what I'd tapped there. I said I could, but it was only this night that I realized how and had done so.

Its become clear to me that I need to, as my Mom says, take up and own more of my own space. Aggression is something I am weakest on, and I need to focus my energies on strengthening that now. Healthy aggression to establish my space illustrates I know what the hell it is I'm pursuing and have a clear understanding of who I am. The more I work on establishing my boundaries I realize the more I'll know where those boundaries are.