[6 min read] I am getting waves of anger now. I know it’s you. I can’t let you out right now. I have to focus.. or at least rest. Physically my face is on fire.. my chest is super tight it hurts. It’s like I can feel someone trying to erupt from within me. When I was reading an email my T sent me I started to feel her… rising within and I remembered something… one of the reasons we don’t let her out. This feeling has always terrified me…
For one, I don’t want to ever be or look anything like my dad and letting her take control is far too close for comfort.
One time. One fucking time, I let her go and I hurt a living creature and that was it. Never again.
I don’t remember when, but for a very long time I have known I had a part of me that is angry and that would come forward in a flash. When people see it, it generally freaks them out and with good reason, it freaks me out. Even more unsettling, I switch back just as quickly.
But this memory is one I’m deeply ashamed of… and it might reveal a little bit about why this part is kept in lock down. Sometime when I was between 13 and 15 (I literally can’t remember) I had a small dog. I was always home alone and I was probably depressed. I just sat at home watching TV or being on the internet. I wanted some space and was in my room alone when I heard my dog whining for attention outside my door. He kept whining off and on for twenty minutes or so. He just wanted my care, but it started to grate on me. (It isn’t lost on me that there is a lot of how my dad reacted to my cries for attention and the resulting reaction I gave to my dog…). I knew that I had this intense rage inside me that I generally kept locked away, but in this one instance, I snapped. I’m so ashamed of this story I had forgotten until just now.
In a rage, I swung open my door, picked up my dog and went out to the back yard and tossed him a couple feet into what I thought was pillowy grass. He jumped out of my arms all the time at roughly the same distance, but he initiated and was always ready for that. This was different, as there was some amount of force and he wasn’t angled right. I heard his leg snap. I was immediately horrified at what just happened, what I did. I heard him yelp and cry and I went quickly over to him. Hysterical, I snapped back to my senses and went to help my poor dog. But I didn’t know how to help, it wasn’t a compound fracture, but the poor creature was in so much pain. So I let him bite into my hand to deal w/ the pain and he did. He bit down over and over hard enough to draw blood, but it was the least I could do in the moment. I gently carried him inside and called my parents. They said they couldn’t help me. They were busy with work and were annoyed/angry at me because now the dog had a broken leg and they had to pay expensive vet bills. They told me to call my brother Eddie (he didn’t live with us) to see if he could help.
I wrapped my dog in a big soft blanket and held him and soothed him until he fell asleep feeling absolutely horrible about myself, about what I had done. Eddie finally got there and drove us to the vet where they put the tiniest cast on him for six weeks or so. And that was it. I told everyone it was an accident, and it was, to some degree, but I know it was because I lost control. My dog healed and was fine, but I will never forgive myself for letting go like that… for allowing her to take over in that way when I knew what was inside of me… or rather at that age, I feared what was inside of me.
It’s what scares me about myself. I’ve always thought that I would one day turn into the same monsters that tormented me in my childhood. And now there was evidence. It’s also yet another reason why I stayed away from children growing up… why I am still nervous around my nieces and nephews. Sometimes I allow myself to enjoy their company, but there’s always this fear that I’m already corrupted. That deep inside, I’m just like my tormentors – I’m a monster too.