Seeing Red

Photo by Nsey Benajah on Unsplash

I am someone who knows the sharp satisfaction of slamming another human’s head against the wall.

You probably wouldn’t have guessed that, right?

I’m a zen hippie expat wife who loves to go on retreats and pray for world peace while on consciousness-expanding substances. I’m known for being calm. Freakishly calm, even.

But I wasn’t always this way.

When I was a kid, I was filled with rage. And I don’t mean that in a casual way.

I mean that I have literally slammed Shrek’s head against a wall while in a fit of rage and felt satisfaction when he crumpled to the ground.

Then immense shame.

But the satisfaction came first.

Because when you have rage, there’s a satisfaction in the release.

At least that’s how I remember it.

These days, I don’t have a clue what rage is like. Mine dissolved as soon as I moved out of my childhood home.

I’ve been with Sam for twelve years and I don’t know if he’s ever even seen me angry.

Well, there was one time when I primal screamed in his face so loud that Shrek came running from the other room because he thought my femur snapped, but that was a day after my dad died. Feelings gotta flow, ya know?

And, in case you didn’t pick up on it from that sentence, I’m not someone who suppresses my emotions. I don’t have burning, fiery anger inside of me that I “manage” or keep pent up.

I also never did any work to resolve my rage.

When I say it dissolved, that’s exactly what I mean.

The rage that lived inside of me simply went away when I left for college and it’s never returned.

Do you want to hear my theory on why?

It’s the reason that my friend Don calls me “nauseatingly optimistic.”

Here it goes:

Between the ages of 17 to 22, I drank in a way that damaged my brain.

My daily blackout drinking – drinking myself into oblivion every day of the week – it caused physical harm.

I was one of those people who would get the shakes if I didn’t drink in the morning. I had bruises all over my body because my liver couldn’t keep up.

And I was approaching wet brain, I suspect. I would encounter people who I knew that I knew – people who I had spent hours and hours, years upon years with – and I wouldn’t be able to remember their names. Or how I knew them. Or what our relationship was.

At the age of 21.

But then I got sober.

And I did it young enough that my brain was still wiring itself (you don’t have your adult brain until around age 25).

So I’ve always just assumed that alcohol permanently damaged the part of my brain where anger and rage live. And then when my brain rewired, that part stayed offline.

Not because I have any proof. I know jack squat about neuroscience. I don’t know where anger lives in the brain, nor do I know if alcohol damages that part.

I just know that I used to have rage and now I don’t.

So I tell myself the nauseatingly optimistic story that the brain damage I incurred worked out for me.

That it was in my best interest.

The best possible unfolding of all possible unfoldings.

And it works for me.

Consider this part two of yesterday’s musing. Me continuing to make the case for making up stories that serve us. Because why not?

Thanks, brain damage, you clever lass. And you too, alcoholism. I appreciate your many, many gifts.

Keely

Morning Musings is a delight-first writing practice where I wake up, put my fingers on the keyboard and “learn in public” (credit: Liz Gilbert). The delightful humans who read these musings tend to see them as an invitation to slow down, have a virtual cup of coffee together, and contemplate the human experience. If you’d like to join our tribe, subscribe here.