Anger and Control: Just Let It Go

In theory I've made peace with my temper. In practice? Not so much. The little gremlins, who happen to be my grandchildren, know exactly where my limits are. I can be as patient and as soft-spoken as a person can be, and then one thing they do, or say, or stubbornly refuse to do or say, pushes me clean past the line. Afterward I feel sick about it, embarrassed that someone so small had to witness me come apart like that.

With the grandkids I put on my best face. Who wouldn't? Part of it is that I want my grown children to see that I've changed since the years I was raising them. I'd like to believe I'm a better example now for their kids than I was back then. Forgiving myself for the past and trying to do better feels possible. Whether my children can forgive me is a separate question. And there's another one I don't love asking myself: if they turn out to be better parents than I was, will some ugly part of me be jealous?

Can a person be too nice? Some days I'd give anything to just cut loose, though never in front of the grandchildren. The older I get, the heavier the sense of responsibility sits on me. I'm harder on myself than I used to be about the small failures: forgetting a task, leaving things half-done, quitting on a problem instead of seeing it through, putting off something I've been meaning to learn. I keep thinking I need a vacation. Not from being alive, nothing like that, just from the grind of ordinary days.

It stuns me how quickly a curse word surfaces when you were sure you'd forgotten how to swear at all. I came close to shaking my fist at someone recently. Picture it: trapped in a cramped SUV with a crying baby, sixty miles of road between me and home, fresh off surgery, and the pharmacy drive-through had failed on the third attempt to actually fill my prescription. So no pain medicine waiting for me at the end of a long ride, and the pharmacy is nowhere near where we live.

A lot of anger traces back to control. Self-control is part of it, sure. But so is the other kind: holding on to control of your own life, your thoughts, your feelings, when holding on is both possible and necessary. Too much Mrs. Nice Guy. Maybe that's what was really underneath the moment I blew up.

Did I fail to stand up for myself? With the children, by not setting the boundaries an adult is supposed to set. With the pharmacy, by letting a business that was supposed to serve me keep me waiting like a hostage instead.

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