Tuesday 25 March 2014

Anger

I have been incredibly angry a lot lately. It's really hard work. I feel sorry for poor Adam having to live with me... well one moment I feel sorry for him and the next I feel so angry with him and wish he'd go away or at least be a bit more useful, interested or understanding. He's a good guy and many others would have given up on me by now. So I swing between really angry at him and breaking my heart at how awful it is for him to have ended up with someone as messed up and horrible as me.

The anger is not only at Adam, in fact it's more so with everyone else in the world. I just can't help seeing the worst in everything. In one way I know I am being overly negative, but in the moment I am incredulous that others wouldn't be as incensed as I am by the situation or person. I am having to completely avoid human interactions because I could ignite at any moment. Family are particularly annoying and I feel I must hibernate to recover for several days after each encounter... and Facebook. Everyday I look over my Facebook news feed to see what my friends have been posting because that's what I used to do out of interest, but now I find myself having to bite my tongue (or thumb) because I can think of a disagreeable thing to respond to almost everything on there.

It's very hard work feeling so enraged constantly. It flares up sometimes for no reason at all. I'll just be sitting on my sofa minding my own business and then I'll remember something that I already got annoyed about days ago, eg an interaction, and then I'll be angry all over again. And I find it almost impossible to not want to verbalise it then. Adam is sick of hearing me complaining and he rarely agrees with anything. I think he notices negatives even less than the average person. In fact, mostly he's just completely oblivious to people being rude or unfriendly to him, whereas I always pick up on any hints of an attitude and feel a need to talk about it with Adam afterwards. It would just be nice if sometimes he'd go: "Yeah, I know what you mean, she was rude!" and then I'd feel better and could forget about it. But we're polar opposites in this area and I just don't seem to be able to learn to keep my mouth shut. It's like I always expect telling him well help and it never does. The other thing is, if I didn't speak my woes, I'd have nothing at all to say because it's mainly all woes.

It's not only people that infuriate me; my patience is non existent. If I'm trying to do something and it's not going straight forwardly I am enraged. Even my cat has been annoying me and he's just an adorable fluff ball really. But I think he senses my anger and doesn't cuddle me as much and then I'm angry with him for not cuddling me. I don't like being this way. I hate myself as much as I hate the world at the moment, if not more. I am a horrible, horrible person and no one would want to be around me like this (and yet I get angry at Adam for not seeming 'into' me). I am being just so destructive. I'm being like two of my siblings who I've never been able to understand: they are mean and angry and see the worst in things and act like the world has done them a disservice and I never understood why they couldn't just see the best in things and get along with people. Yet suddenly, it's like a monster has invaded me and taken over my being and all I want to do is scream and break stuff and throw things and tell every person all the things they've done to annoy me, of which there are many. I've punched mirrors, banged my head off doors, thrown my phone at the wall, smashed stuff. It just doesn't help.

I'm trying to see the positives in things. I don't want to be this way. It's so exhausting. I believed we make a choice about how we look at things but it feels like I have no control. The only thing I feel I can do is try to keep away from people so that I don't destroy my relationships. Unfortunately I can't get away from Adam.
I've said to him it would be better if I go away and he doesn't respond. I know it would be better for him. I wish I could go away and get better and come back and appreciate my life and my husband. If things go on this way, my relationship might not be able to recover.

Apart from angry, I'm also feeling a lot of sadness and despair lately too. Everything makes me cry. I mean EVERYTHING. I can't watch the TV for more than five minutes without having to blink back tears. Most times it's something ridiculous like a soppy moment in a comedy. Or someone won the 'Win the adverts' in Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway last week and I almost burst into tears. What the heck. I've also had more full on bawling my eyes out in despair sessions in the last month than I probably had in the previous five years.

I don't know about all of this. In a way, much of my trouble is that I don't usually feel. It usually gets displaced into physical symptoms or I dissociate, so does that mean this is a good thing? Because it doesn't feel like it. And my physical symptoms are nearly as bad recently as they were before I ever started going to therapy (that was one thing that had drastically improved for me). I'm getting sickness, pains, headaches more frequently. I feel like I am in mourning for something. I feel like I'm mourning my entire life: my father, my mother, myself, what I believed I had from T; the loss of hope. I always had hope. I always believed I'd get better, that T could help me. Well, she said she could, so I believed her. I don't anymore. I have little belief that things can be truly better. I might not always feel as bad as I do now but I feel hopeless about ever really being able to live. I'm feeling sorry for myself in the worst possible way, but it just feels like I'm finally being real and seeing things as they really are.

 I feel like I am out of control. I'm in a very dark place. I'm sabotaging every good thing in my life. My self esteem couldn't be lower. If Adam were to challenge me, I would crumple into a bawling heap of despair and self loathing. And I still don't know what, if anything, is going to help me get through this. At the moment, I am seriously considering looking into asking if I can get NHS funding to go to a residential unit that helps people affected by trauma. I contacted the hospital in the past and they said they felt I would be a good candidate, but at the time I couldn't imagine the prospect of leaving Adam for up to a year, especially with it being across the water and what would I tell my family. Now I feel it might be the best thing for both of us before I completely destroy my life. And if an intensive treatment could help me get better and start living it would be worth the time investment, because let's face it: I'm no better now than I was five months ago. I could be in this bad place for another five months yet and I could have gone and come back in that time.

2 comments:

Healing said...

I very much understand about that anger thing. I found that it is usually something buried that has been trying to seep out. Sometimes it takes a while to discover what it is. Don't give up.

Candycan said...

Hi Healing, thanks for your reflections. I think that's probably right in my case as well. I think I'm angry about a whole lot of stuff that's happened in the past that I just didn't feel angry about then. It's hard to tolerate though :/