“a writer, truth-seeker, and legend in his own mind. He loves good stories, good words, and good beer. He shares his random thoughts on life at his blog, The Daily Gallen. Follow him on Twitter @tim_gallen, or stalk him on Facebok. He won’t mind.

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Angry with myself

I’m a pretty easygoing guy. I tend to go with the flow and embrace the situation.
But, please, don’t misjudge my easygoing character.

I can get angry. Really angry.
I have screamed, howled, and cursed. I have thrown things, I have punched pillows and walls. I have embraced my anger.

But, for me these external manifestations are rare exceptions. Usually, I internalize my anger, keep it inside.

I get angry a lot, actually. I get angry at the idiots who don’t know how to drive. I get angry at the idiots in my neighborhood who don’t clean up after their dogs or who let their yards become so overgrown they look like untamed jungles.

I get angry at the idiots who play their music loud and others who have a party that is way too loud and goes well into the night while I’m trying to sleep.
I get angry at the idiots who post moronic, ignorant comments all across the Internet, thinking the anonymity gives them a right to be cruel and stupid.

I get angry at the idiots who think it’s OK to treat other people like dirt, or people who do nothing but play the victim, blaming anything and anybody – the government, their parents, their employer, etc. – for their present situation in life.

I get angry at my friends sometimes, too. Angry at their lives that seem so much more fulfilling and rich than mine. Better-paying (or at least cooler-sounding) jobs, fancier cars, exotic vacations, and other trinkets of success that make me grind my teeth out of anger, frustration, and, yes, even jealousy.

But the idiot I am most angry with is myself.

While I am no stranger to the traditional manifestation of anger – elevated volume, downcast eyebrows, snearing countenance – my self-anger hardly ever manifests in this way. Rather than yell and scream at myself, I avoid the things I say I want to do, wallowing in a pool of self-pity and despair. I screwed up again, I’m so angry, but I’m going to mope rather than take a different action.

This was very much the case when I wrestled with depression over the past two years. I’d wager that when most people think of depression, they equate it to sadness, a deep melancholy from which any type of emotion is hard to come by. Well, other than sadness.

But depression isn’t only about sadness. It’s about doubt. It’s about fear. It’s about anger.

When you’re depressed, anger comes easily. You lash out at the world, like an injured animal. After all, you are injured.

Broken.

Depression can result in shaking fists and howling at the moon in anger. Or, in my case, myself. And God.
I’d scream at Him when I drove to work, accusing Him of abandonment, forgetting about me in the pit of despair that seemed too deep to climb out of.
But I didn’t let myself off the hook, either. In fact, convinced I was on my own, I grew angry at myself. How could I have allowed myself to get to such a state? Why couldn’t I make change that I knew was necessary to climb out of the pit?

I still do this at times.

While I don’t believe myself depressed any longer, I still get angry with myself far too often. When I mess up, fail, or spend time doing something other than being productive, I mentally berate myself. I turn in on myself and give up.
But you know what? While I’ve still a ways to go, I’m trying to give myself some grace, as well as remember: like other reactions, anger is a choice.
What I’ve learned about anger is that it’s OK, but like every reaction to the world, it’s a choice. People spend billions of dollars a year trying to be happy, but happiness isn’t something you can buy – either at the mall or the pharmacy. Rather, it is a choice. A choice between smiling or frowning. A choice between laughing or growling. A choice between feeling the spring breeze on your face and a harsh, bitter wind. A choice between appreciating and acknowledging the beauty of the world and believing it does not exist.

Anger is the same way.

Sometimes, I still give into anger and frustration. I am human, after all. But in those moments I try to remind myself that I am making a choice, one I can change later, once the novelty or feel-good effects wear off. Even before then. If I choose.

Oly Gold was lowcal before lowcal was a thing.

But whatever. I never tried it. What I did do, as a kid, was every time he asked me to get him a beer from the fridge, I shook it up. (This was when beer was still sold in steel cans, with pull-tabs. I’m old. Shut up). I could hear the roiling pressure of the trapped gases awaiting their released, but he usually didn’t.

Beer splosion!

Followed by, “CHAD!!!”

I either thought it was funny enough to risk the butt hurt I could be subjected to, or I had some latent resentments I harbored against the man… Probably both. It wouldn’t be the first, or the last, time I’d done something passive aggressive.

Yeah, I got issues. But I loved the man, and wanted his attention. And the “shake up the beer game” was one of the ways I got it. When a kid isn’t feeling the love, he will resort to desperate measures to ensure it. Lack love is usually why kids act out.

It’s their way of saying “Notice me.”

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Dad was gone more and more, working later and later hours. As I got a little older, the beer game lost its luster. I stopped trying to get his attention, retreating more and more into myself, and the world of books, movies, magazines.

But I still loved my old man. Knew when he wasn’t home. Even if he didn’t have time for me, I knew when he was there, and when he wasn’t. I mean I still had hope, you know?

I remember a night when I couldn’t sleep. The clock ticked eleven, twelve, one, two… I wasn’t up reading: I was worried about my dad. Was he okay? Why wasn’t he home? Around two o’clock, there was a noise: the sound of a door being jerked open at the far end of the house.

I heard the master bedroom door open, the pad of my mom’s feet in the tiled hall.

I followed her.

Down the hall, through the family room, and into the kitchen I followed her.

There was my dad, standing in the doorway separating the breakfast nook from the entryway, swaying a little–listing from starboard to port, and back again.

The sour notes of cheap beer, piss, and bar smoke wafted off him in waves. But the piss wasn’t his. No, there was a quivering dark bundle under his left arm.

My mom asked “Mont, what’s going on? Why are you so late? Where have you been?”

“Dad,” I asked, “are you okay?”

My mom turned to me, asked me what I was doing up? Said I couldn’t sleep. She directed me back to bed. The last thing I heard as I walked to my room was:

“Why are you so late? I was really worried about you.”

“Because… Dog?” my dad intoned like a question. Because what he had under his arm was just that: a quivering Cockapoo we later named “Puppy.”

Because… Dog?

What place?

The one where you’re maligned and misunderstood by those closest to you.

There are ways, and there are ways, to deal with this.

One way is to shut down, hide within. Which means putting on a false face–a facade. But it hurts to hide who you are from those closest to you.

And the self will find a away out.

So what do you do when it doesn’t feel safe anymore to be you?

Like I said, you can hide. But this has a way of festering. Resentment is bound to grow whether you’re conscious of it, or not.

How do I know? I’ve been there. Dealt with that rejection.

I’ve been in a men’s group, and made the mistake of sharing my (personal) convictions about the age of the earth. The group imploded. Made me not want to have friends anymore. Made me want to skip the risk.

I’ve done it with family members, too. When my motives were called into question, when I’ve changed my mind about something… and was rejected. When something in social media spheres happened that was both unlocked, and unasked, for.

Somehow it was my fault.

When a friend of a friend questioned my salvation, and family members didn’t step in to defend me, but rather gave credence to it.

So I learned to hide.

And in hiding, I became vulnerable. When it was no longer safe to be me around those closest to me, I found an outlet via email. At first, it was just this fun thing where I could let my hair down, be me.

That was refreshing.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how much of myself I was investing–how much time, thought, life was going to this unreality.

Because it came to the place where I was constantly refreshing my email, looking for a message, a word, a something to…

Make me feel like me. Because I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I ask you: have you been in that place?

Take it from me: it’s far better to face your fears, risk rejection, and have the difficult conversations. (Consider this: Jesus himself spent his whole earthly life being rejected by his own. Yet in it all he did not sin).

If you’re hiding from those closest to you: take your mask off. Lay down your rapier wit.

It’s time to be vulnerable. For it’s in being thus open that, yes, we risk rejections, but at the same time paradoxically find grace.

Are you wearing any false faces today?