'Spress Yo'self!

"We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents." - Emerson, Self-Reliance

I suspect most of you have stumbled across that line before in a high school literature course. It seems to really sink in with me finally. I've been thinking a lot lately about how to express myself and dealing with general negative emotions, specifically anger and sadness. And then J has this bloody brilliant post about flying off the handle on someone and how her anger scared her. So I'm going to take time to take these thoughts that have been swirling in my head for half a year and put them down.

There's different stages to my anger. The first is just scratching the surface, and it's usually resolved in 5 minutes b/c I'll have calmed down and forgotten why I was angry in the first place. The second is if you actually irritate me. And when most people turn away from confrontation, I seek it out. I want to argue until things are worked out. I hate walking away from someone when I'm angry. We both know we're upset so why hide it? It seems cowardly and like you don't respect me enough to think we'll still be friends after this is resolved. Isn't the whole point for this to be resolved? So let's get to it, and fast. About halfway through arguing, I forget what we started arguing about. And about the same time I calm down and rationally think about what was said and come to some conclusion where we're no longer mad at each other and everything is good. Just don't breech that topic again for a week-ish. I'm fine with how I handle this. It's not a perfect way of getting angry, but it works for me.

But when I get really angry, that's when it gets bad. My anger has never scared me. Ever. But I'm not ignorant enough to believe it has never scared anyone else. It's not that I enjoy getting angry, but there is a certain thrill to it. You hit that point when you get so angry that you start to shake and maybe even cry and you don't know how to evaluate these emotions, how to understand them, quantify them, express them. My "super anger" needs to be expressed in some more effective way. It's not that I shouldn't express myself (Emerson would be so disappointed if I suggested that) nor am I ashamed of how my anger currently manifests itself. I just know it's not good! See, when I get really angry, I get aggressive. I flirt with being verbally abusive. I spew random hurtful insults just because I can. I turn into this irrational being with these huuuuge blinders that block any counterpoint, any attempt to find some middle ground. That's not...anything positive. At all.

So how do I address that this needs to change without changing who I am? It seems to me that I wouldn't be fully expressing myself then. I would be shamed into silence. I would be limiting myself. And that is more or less precisely what I am trying to avoid. I feel like I just need to stop being as much of a bitch when I get angry. I should just stop being petty when arguing and then everything would be okay. I haven't been really super angry in a while and don't plan on getting that angry any time soon, but I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm quite the opposite with sadness. I hide that away under lock and key. No one is allowed to know I'm sad. Recently, my boyfriend and I were cuddling (I know, cue the ewwws) and he randomly asked if I was okay. I said yeah, but truth is I was hit with a wave of sadness about 30 minutes earlier while doing homework. There was absolutely no reason for me to be sad and I'd managed to hide it thus far so why ruin a perfectly good snuggle session by saying that I was mildly sad without any idea as to why? But just like I dislike when people turn away from anger, I bet he at least somewhat dislikes that I didn't let him know I felt sad. So that's making me feel guilty and a bit sad, but hell will freeze over before I let on to that in person.

I don't know why I feel so differently about sadness than anger. If anything, I should think that anger should never be expressed because it was so severely punished when shown as a kid...and my parents never ever argued in front of my brother or I. But sadness was okay. Being sad was fine. I just stopped showing it somewhere along the line. Maybe it was a sort of backfire or rebellion to how I was brought up. I don't know. I don't know! I want to express these emotions honestly and freely, but without making a freaking scene. I feel like I've never expressed negative emotions in a good way. Ever. And it's about damn time I learn how to do that. We all gotta grow up sometime, right?