Operation Achieve Anything: Day Two-Hundred-Thirty-Seven, Dateline 8-25-2018
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“No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.”
Good morning crickets. Welcome to day number two-hundred-thirty-seven of Operation Achieve Anything. Last night I partook of the second of the two high potency edibles that I bought on my last payday that I planned to use to truly test the comfort level of my new adjustable bed frame. I ate the first one last week while the bed was on order, and I just wanted to force myself into a break. I can’t believe that there are laws against something so natural and has the potential to do so much good.
Before, when I was a daily drunk, I had to be very careful to stay in a specific pocket of drunkenness to avoid letting out any of my buried rage. In my early twenties, that rage would creep up often because I didn’t start drinking until later in life, so I didn’t have that phase through high school where I learned to control my drunk like most of my peers. From about twenty-three on I found that sweet spot while drinking in public but I was still a mess when I was drinking alone.
With medical marijuana, I still get depressed, but when I’m in it, it’s more reflective as I use my skills as a writer to imagine the perspective from everyone involved as opposed to the finger pointing that comes when I’m drunk. Yes, I still do blame others for some aspects of my miserable life, but I’m also now more accepting, or at least aware that the people who I felt weren’t doing me wrong were dealing with issues of their own.
For example, I blame a lot of my family for my rage because as I often point out, I was raised by alcoholics and enablers. This combination can confuse the hell out of a kid’s developing mind. It causes you to be raised with so many contradictions that it gets hard to grasp the difference between up and down. Here are these people who are trying to teach you right from wrong yet if any of the alcoholics acted up the enablers would justify these terrible actions or just act as if nothing was happening at all.
More often than not, it would be the innocent who took the brunt of the alcoholic’s verbal abuse. I keep going back and forth between whether or not I feel lucky that all of the abused that I witnessed was verbal versus physical. I think that if I were to have dealt with physical abuse, I would have turned and taken it out on someone else.
Sure, this would have probably gotten me in a lot more trouble, but at the same time, my action might have been visible enough that someone would have reached out for help. Instead, here I sit, constantly feeling like I’m rotting in this prison of a head trying to figure out how I ended up the bad guy in this shitty situation, while most outsiders who don’t read my work think I’m absolutely fine.
As a hybrid of this alcoholic and enabler species, I have the inner rage of the drunks along with the strong need for denial-based peace. This caused me to bury things deep all throughout my life, and now that I’m old, I’m running out of space to bury all of these bones which is why I opt to be all alone so that no one will witness my many mini outbursts.
Though the medical marijuana really helps to calm me when I’m on it, I only smoke when I’m completely done with my work when I no longer have anything going on to ignite any of this anger. This may make me sound like a monster, but I genuinely am a big loveable teddy bear when it comes to interacting with others. Where the rage releases with when technical things go wrong, like the internet going out in the middle of a project (which it often does), I’ll start cussing and screaming and at times throw things around my room, while fully aware that I’m overreacting, but I just can’t control myself.
I hate that this is an aspect of me that I’ve always had to live with. Every time that I’ve ever sought help, it’s been from either an enabler or alcoholic who think everything will just work out in the wash over time. This brand of advice has not gotten me anywhere at all, if anything, it’s only added to my nihilistic view that all of these efforts are pointless since it leaves you with nothing to hold on to. Of all of the sections in this Achieve Anything… book I’m really hoping this section on anger management will be the inspiration I need to go and seek out some real help because this outlook is getting old.
All the above pretty much fulfills the assignment from yesterday where I was only supposed to share an example of a way that anger expresses itself within me to kick off this anger management section. As for today’s assignment, I’m now supposed to describe some of the physical manifestations that show up as signs as I transition from calm to anger.
This should be an interesting one because I think about this a lot as I try to figure out a way to calm myself before the Tourettes style screaming sets in, but, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow to hear my thought on the subject. Until then, it’s now time for me to sign off by saying, good day and good luck to you and all of your projects.
Talk to you soon.
Sincerely,
The Wicker Breaker
P.S. Below are links to my novel, which I plan to promote as part of Operation Achieve Anything, as well as a link to where you can buy the book that is providing the structure to this project in case you would like to purchase it in order to play along.
