I imagine you might think, “Ah.
Anger. One of the stages of grief; to be expected.” Well, in my
current state of mind... perhaps you could take a minute, put your
lips together, place your tongue in an appropriate position, and
blow. If the sound coming out of your mouth doesn't sound like a
“raspberry,” repeat until it does.
There was a time, back in the day, when
my being angry would have been as newsworthy as “Dog bites man.”
In other words, not worth even mentioning.
Back in the day, I actually had a
counselor tell me I changed every emotion into anger quicker than
anyone she ever knew. Well, of course I said, “Thank you.” One
doesn't always get the chance to be the best at something, and even
then I knew being polite was important. “That's not a good thing,”
she said. To which I replied, “Why don't you just shut up?”
keeping my mood-changing streak alive.
Now this was an excellent counselor, so
she persisted. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” (I could be persistent
too, with the added advantage of being immature.)
“You were just thinking about
something that was making you tear up, but immediately you got angry
instead, You cut off those tears completely. Why did you do that?”
I had a quick answer for her, right out
of my “Big Book of Answers Guaranteed to get a Counselor off Your
Back.”
“Because, I'm afraid if I start
crying, I won't be able to stop,” I said in a manner that suggested
weeping was just around the corner.
She laughed. “Well, that's foolish,”
she said. “You're going to fall asleep at some point, and you'll
stop crying then.”
As an angry person, I was a little
short on snappy comebacks. “Yeah? Well, so's your mother,” I
barked, hoping volume would make up for the fact that it made no
sense whatsoever. But then, I thought it over for a moment and
decided, “I want my money back on that 'Big Book of Answers
Guaranteed to get a Counselor off Your Back,' that's for damned
sure!”
But that was just the start of a
beautiful relationship that counselor and I were to have as we worked
on my anger issues. Mind you, this was before anger management became
a fashionable term. She had the big, padded stick deal you were
supposed to hit things with when you got mad. I never used them, but
in keeping with my own style, I did speak harshly to them a number of
times.
That was almost 20 years ago and it has
been a long time since I set about changing any coming emotion into
anger. So, when I say I seem to be angry at this point in time, it
isn't something I say lightly, or without considerable thought.
But here's the thing: I am also very,
very tired. I know I've moaned about this before, but the tiredness
is worse than ever. I know I should write fatigue, instead of
tiredness, but it isn't fatigue. It is tiredness. If you don't see
any difference, that's okay. It's sort of like saying I'm dealing
with anger management instead of anger issues, I suppose. It's a
question of tone.
I'm sure I don't sound very brave when
I say I'm tired of my bones hurting each and every day and the
constant pains in my stomach are getting old. Then, too, being aware
that I have an incurable cancer, even though our treatment protocol
has kicked its ass, is wearing on me.
I'm also pretty tired of hearing myself
speak/write about me. I just feel like yelling, “Shut up, shut up,
shut up,” every time I have a self-centered thought. But then, I
also feel like yelling, “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” every time I
hear someone talk about cute puppy/kitten pictures/videos on
Facebook, so what am I supposed to do about that?
When we were first going together,
Sheri used to try to get me to physically release the anger by
striking cookie sheets against posts in the basement. It didn't
really help with my anger issues, but it did cause a lot of bent
cookie sheets. For that whole period of time you could always tell
the cookies we brought to any social situation because ours were the
ones that wouldn't lay flat. Ha ha.
But, of course, given time, the anger
passes, just like so many other ups and downs that have become part
of my journey, which, at this point, is far more of a mental
challenge than physical. The one constant in all of it is the
gratitude I have for the life I am now living. The sooner I get in
touch with that part of my heart, the sooner the other... stuff …
goes away.
There are a variety of versions of
the story that gives this blog its name. The pony is the constant in
all of them. A man is on his way to a party when he comes across a
young boy shoveling ass over tea kettle at an enormous mountain of
manure. The man asks the child if he wouldn't rather go with him to
the party than shovel all that poop. The kid says, “No way man.
With all that poop... there must be a pony in there somewhere
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