One angry woman

Photos from www.flickr.com

This is how I felt yesterday. I was angry, and it festered all day long.

Being angry usually hurts me more than it hurts the object of my rage: in this case, my husband. It gives me a headache, makes me feel sick to my stomach. It's not healthy when it's kept inside. It sucks up what little energy I have.

But here's the thing: Letting it out can be destructive if it's not handled right. It erupts like a volcano. It turns into a stampede that runs away with your better nature. It gets ugly.

Anger is normal. It can be a signal, like pain, that something needs to be taken care of. It's an inner voice that demands to be heard. But most of us don't know how to rein it in, and, like wild horses, it can run away, dragging us behind.

And I don't know about you, but when I get really, really angry and defensive at the same time, it often means that I'm confronting something in myself that I don't like very much. That's what happened to me yesterday. Oh, it simmered all day long and erupted at bedtime when I was too tired and defenseless to contain it, leaving a mess this morning that I have to clean up.

So when I sat down to write and looked for a picture that would illustrate an angry nannygoat, I found the elephant, trumpeting, "You've gone too far! Back off or you'll be sorry!" There I was, perfectly illustrated.

But then something funny happened. I saw the way I must really look when I'm mad, and it's not nearly so righteous and majestic as that elephant standing her ground. I think it looks more like this. That's probably how I look this morning.

I still feel misunderstood, taken for granted, put upon and disregarded, but which one us doesn't feel that way from time to time? I just realized that harmony is important to me, that being angry takes too much energy, that sometimes we look in the mirror for reassurance that we're right, and this is what is staring back at us.