The thing I want people to know is this: Sometimes I am angry. Sometimes I strike out. Sometimes I am too numb and too hurt to care. This unpredictable anger surprises even me and yet I have come, through time, to know why its there and where it comes from. When it will appear and to whom it will be directed is the surprising part.
Within me there is a hole, a void, a chasm - whatever you would like to call it and within that dark place there is so much anger. Some times without warning - kind of like a volcano - it just boils up and explodes into the sky, raining down on anyone that happens to be in its path.
Now usually I am a gentle, soft-spoken soul but as time has shown - time being the last four years - not always. Do others understand the whys of my anger? do they understand where it comes from? Oh my, no! I don't know in advance what I will say and seem to have no control over what suddenly boils forth; and while I don't like it, I do understand it. It comes from a part of me that is horribly and terribly broken. A part of me that can't be fixed. A part of me where grief and sorrow has etched on my soul a wound that cannot be healed.
When my son Christian by choice left us - not just me but us, it left me so empty. To understand that emptiness, you must understand who he was and what he meant to so many of us left behind. He was such a bright light. He lit up the room with his presence, his laughter, his sense of humor, his caring ways. HE MADE YOU FEEL AS THOUGH YOU WERE THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE WHEN YOU WERE WITH HIM. There was never a question about his love. He felt it, he showed it. When that type of light is extinguished, the world becomes very dark. Pitch Black. Almost without air.
And in that black, dark place there is anger. All kinds of anger. Not just anger that he is gone but anger about the why and the who. Toss in a huge helping of guilt - reasonable or unreasonable - and you've got a recipe for explosive, unpredictable anger.
This type of anger isn't directed at anyone. Although the unfortunate person in my presence at the time will never think that since my words seem to be directed at them. It is an anger directed at the universe. This is an anger so deep that totally unrelated things can set it off without warning and without fairness to the recipient. And for that I am sorry. Really, really, really sorry.
I wish people could understand it. I wish it wasn't so. I wish things were different. I wish things had been different. I don't like this part of the "new" me.
Dean Koontz wrote in his book Odd Thomas the following:
"Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it. The Chamber of Unreasonable Guilt is part of my mental architecture, and I doubt that I will ever be able to renovate that particular room in this strange castle that is me."
I cannot expect that those I know will be able to accept this part of me and love me in spite of it. I can only hope that they can and that they will. To avoid this part of myself, I avoid life. I avoid people. This part of the journey is so difficult and so lonely.
