Recognizing what I'm feeling
Why is it that the word 'grudge' is almost phonetically similar to the word 'crush?'
I've learned ever since I was 12 that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. So I can hate somebody close to me, but it's because I most probably care.
I don't like anger and all the connotations that it carries. To me, anger is yelling, hurting other people. That is what I saw it to be as I grew up. Then I went to confession one day, and Father told me that there is such thing as just anger. Christ felt anger, and he upturned tables in the temple. But not even scriptures and beliefs can convince me enough that anger is just an emotion, that it is not destructive action unless one makes it to be just that. Instead, I have personal experience dictate for me what it's like to be a object of someone's anger, to be yelled at over the phone and to have that diatribe immortalized in my voicemail. After years of knowing anger to be yelling and hurting, I figured that I shouldn't even feel anger in the first place.
But I snap too. There are some times it just gets too unbearable. Yet, if I'm mad at people whom I'm most probably going to see again, or people I don't want to hurt out of stupid and ridiculously subjective reasons, then I try to hide it. I don't want to feel that way, because what if I yell and do something I regret? What if I render any relationships irreparable? So I put it away. Now some may think I totally understand and acquiesce right on the spot when I don't react angrily. Heck, I believe that enough to even fool myself. In the end, that's exactly what I've done: I've denied myself the very fact that just like any other human being, I snap too.
Some grudges I can't help but wonder why I still feel them. It's got such a bad stigma attached to it, that grudges are controllable, so those who harbor them are just horrible or stupid or immature. Now's as good a time as any to admit that I am frustrated and mad. And I just might run away while my heart's still beating.
I've learned ever since I was 12 that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. So I can hate somebody close to me, but it's because I most probably care.
I don't like anger and all the connotations that it carries. To me, anger is yelling, hurting other people. That is what I saw it to be as I grew up. Then I went to confession one day, and Father told me that there is such thing as just anger. Christ felt anger, and he upturned tables in the temple. But not even scriptures and beliefs can convince me enough that anger is just an emotion, that it is not destructive action unless one makes it to be just that. Instead, I have personal experience dictate for me what it's like to be a object of someone's anger, to be yelled at over the phone and to have that diatribe immortalized in my voicemail. After years of knowing anger to be yelling and hurting, I figured that I shouldn't even feel anger in the first place.
But I snap too. There are some times it just gets too unbearable. Yet, if I'm mad at people whom I'm most probably going to see again, or people I don't want to hurt out of stupid and ridiculously subjective reasons, then I try to hide it. I don't want to feel that way, because what if I yell and do something I regret? What if I render any relationships irreparable? So I put it away. Now some may think I totally understand and acquiesce right on the spot when I don't react angrily. Heck, I believe that enough to even fool myself. In the end, that's exactly what I've done: I've denied myself the very fact that just like any other human being, I snap too.
Some grudges I can't help but wonder why I still feel them. It's got such a bad stigma attached to it, that grudges are controllable, so those who harbor them are just horrible or stupid or immature. Now's as good a time as any to admit that I am frustrated and mad. And I just might run away while my heart's still beating.
posted by Dawn at 11:48 PM
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