Anger And Where It Gets Me - [Matthew]

Girls are so lucky. Not in many respects, but at least one. When they’re feeling sad, angry, whatever, when the emotional pressure is out of equilibrium with the outside world, they can cry. They can cry and they feel better. The problem, whatever it is, is still there, but there’s a climax, a turning point. They get the emotional stuff out of the way and then can look at the problem through clear eyes. And when your eyes are wet with tears, your vision literally is clearer.

Guys-- and I feel comfortable in speaking on behalf of my entire gender-- we don’t deal with surplus emotions as neatly. But we (and by ‘we’ I mean me) do have our own simple answer, chiefly anger.

So instead of working my way through fifty cents worth of Kleenex, I’m suddenly looking at a splintered door, dents in a wall, dents in a metal front door, a hole in a wall, a smashed up keyboard... not abstract, made-up examples if you must know. I wish it were different. The anger kind of just hangs out inside you. Sitting there, waiting. Historically speaking it finds its way out at inappropriate and inconvenient times, usually over nothing.

I’ve been feeling said anger, plus a sprinkling of depression, all weekend. And if I had the ability to cry, it would have been over days ago. Cry. Boom. Done. Moving on. Instead, I’m sitting here, typing in total darkness (literal, not metaphorical) as I will sometimes do, sipping on a whiskey glass of Southern Comfort that, to be perfectly honest, isn’t comforting me at all.

But the punching doesn’t do it. The drinking definitely doesn’t do it. The typing with my hands with knuckles calloused from hitting my wooden desktop doesn’t do it. I’m not leading toward anything here, if that’s what you’re waiting for.

I totally enjoy being a guy. I like that we’re wash-and-wear, ready to go, throw-us-in-the-woods-for-a-month-and-we-can-take-it kind of creatures. We’re practical, no nonsense. You tell me a problem, I’ll try to think of a way to fix it. When you’re starting a planet and you’re putting someone in charge, you would want it to be somebody with that kind of can-do attitude.

Pity poor Adam. He must’ve been so pissed when he found out that Eve blew their housing arrangement. To be fair, he had a role in the incident, too. God knows I’ve used his closing argument before: ‘It was the woman’s fault.’ Oh man, but it isn’t. I’m the one who took what she said personally, then smashed the box of Rice Krispies. I’m the one who took what was intended as an innocent comment and flew off the handle. Let loose angry words like a squadron of F-16s, armed to the teeth, that I couldn’t call back to cancel the bombing run. I’m the one who gets angry, who hides, who lies, who misleads. I’m the one who turns in, throws up the force fields, who pulls up the rope ladder to the treehouse, who sets the guns at the turrets.

Oh, man. Oh sad, pitiable, miserable, fallen, broken man. It’s enough to make you cry.

Almost.

[end ping]