Aggression

Ha! Finally a word I don’t have to investigate and find the root of. I GET this word.

Let’s see. There is the pent up aggression. The outward aggression. There is road-rage aggression.
I’m sure there is a lot more different types of aggression that I harbor, but those are the three that come to mind.

It isn’t a coincidence that ‘pent up’ is the first aggression I listed. I’m so familiar with Pent Up that if we met at a party, we would totally hang out and be BFF’s.

I had a friend once who use to go to get her colon cleansed by some doctor. She said, and I swear on this, the color of the stuff they were pulling out of her was a ‘toxic’ color. They said the first few sessions were to clean out the medications she had been taking, but as they got further up the line (couldn’t think of less gross way to say it) they were pulling out ‘colors’ that represent the pent up aggression she was feeling in her body.
I have no desire for anyone to crawl up my ass to tell me how much aggression I have. I know how much I have. It’s not like I’m going to go out one day and smash a bottle of Smucker’s Jam into some fellow shoppers head because she said I looked pregnant…but it’s close.

For me, leaving my aggression where it lives inside of me is the only way to survive. The last time I let my aggression out on someone I came thisclose to running him off the road into a telephone pole. That ironically doesn’t fall into my ‘road rage’ aggression.

The outward aggression is mostly heard by my children. They tend to ‘push it’ with me. Asking me something, me saying no and then trying to speak again as if we were at the round table of discussion. I first say it nice. Then I get louder. AND THEN LOUDER. Then of course they take it ONE step further and do the exasperated sigh and mumble as they walk away. The sigh is a trigger for me. I hate the sigh. I hate the last word mumble too. Then I make them STOP and come back because NOW they are going to have it.
Each child in my house is different. Tyler stands there and stares blankly at me and nods his head. Marina stands there and stares blankly at me and wells up with tears. Kara, she pushes it…to the final breaking point. Alyx just shrugs her shoulders and walks away. Now we have Shea. *deep breath* She cries. EVERYTHING is a dramatical moment in her life. It is as if there is a film crew living in our house recording her every move and she must please the masses or her ratings will drop and she’ll be replaced by Hannah Montana.
It’s been 9 years of this and I have just finally figured out how to not get her to cry when, BY GOD HER PANTS DON’T FIT RIGHT. I whisper. “Shea, you need to find a shirt that matches the pants. You can’t wear that.”
She looks at me like I have broken my precious toy. “Mommy, why are you whispering?”
and I told her, “Because if I talk to you like a normal human being, you’ll start crying. shhhh. now lets just find you a shirt okay?”
This of course leads to me hanging out with my BFF– Pent Up Aggression.

Now, as for my road rage aggression. I am so convinced there is not a single driver out there that can drive. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’m not on the list of offenders. Just ask my beautiful friend, Lisa who I have managed to almost run off the road at least 4 times. On accident, of course.
When I first met Shaun, I would only drive to his house at night and leave very early in the morning. Half of it was because of fear of him saying, “Whoa, why are you still here?” and the other half was that there weren’t as many drivers on the road for me to scream at.
Luckily with medication this has gotten MUCH better.

So how do I deal with my Pent Up aggression? Sometimes I will clean the living hell out of ONE thing. Other times I sit in the backyard and smoke. Most of the time I just bottle it up. It’s not healthy. I should take a kick boxing class or something, but I don’t.
Most of what I have stored in kegs inside of me is aggression that I CAN NOT let out. It has to sit there undisturbed because it’s not right for me to let it out. If I do, I think I would fall into a heap of crying mess on the floor and not be able to recover from it.

How about you? What’s your strategy’s with dealing with aggression? Do you have to deal with other’s aggressions?