The other day at a doctors appt. I was asked by my doctor, why I dont show more anger, he said I should be more angry. What he does not realize is that I am extremely angry, so angry at times its hard to function. It took me a few days of contemplation on this, and a lot of thought to be able to answer this to myself. The thing is that I am full of anger, and for over a year after my surgery in January 2009 I could not go a day without breaking down and crying and losing control. Crying because of being angry that someone took my life in their hands and made me live this way just to further themselves with their lies. Crying because of the pain and humiliation I now had to live with, Crying because I now had to live a new kind of life that is just not fair. Its not fair to those around me to have to deal with, and therefore making them angry and hurt as well.
I have always had this theory and my answer to this question of anger is going to blow my theory right out of the water, this theory that I have stated time and time again over the years. I have always said that if you have abusive parents and you are a child that the parents are at fault for either allowing or causing this, but once you become an adult, you are responsible for your own decisions and your own life. Now this is where my theory gets blown out of the water. I realized after much thought, that I am handling the anger the same way I learned to handle anger as a child. This post is going to get very personal, as I really need to explain my past to explain my present. It is the only way it will make sense to anyone, because my doctor made me realize that I am the only one that does not see what others do. I just assume that they would understand that I am just dealing with it in my own way. I will be telling of things that I never thought I would put out there, things I have kept to myself inside my whole life. So I guess here it goes, and it might be a long read and at times hard for you to read, but I think it will explain my reaction to anger and make it a little clearer for those that do not understand, when they talk to me why they do not normally see the strong anger I have, I might seem somewhat normal to them.
I guess this is where I go back to the beginning :) I was the youngest of six children and had probably two of the worst parents in the world. I was physically abused over and over, year after year. My dad used to have this thing that he used to beat us with that was made up of 7 flat rubber straps duck taped together. I can only explain it as like a flogger. To make it hurt worse he actually put holes all through it so the rough edges would make the pain worse. This was used on a normal basis on us kids, for the slightest thing we might do wrong, or even if it was just thought to be wrong. I learned from probably around 5 that the more you cried and showed your pain, the more you were to get hit. So I learned not to cry and just take it. You just take it and go inside yourself. I learned early to control. That at least I did not have to give that satisfaction of letting others see how much I hurt.
Then I had a mother that was addicted to drugs, who if she was not at work as a nurse (which is where she got her drugs) Then she was sleeping because she was so drugged out all the time. She never stood up for her children and sat and watched the abuse. Not only were we whipped with this rubber tool of my dads making, but we were also made to sit in dark closets for hours on end, or made to stand on one foot naked on the counter in the kitchen and if we even dared to put the other foot down, out came the rubber whip. To say the least we learned really great balance. It was extremely humiliating to stand like that in front of everyone else in the house and see the looks on their faces, that look that lets you know they are glad its you this time instead of them.
At the age of 8, I was at my church and was asked to help our minister to take some measurements in a shed on the property. Being that I was only 8 and with no adult who cared enough to watch me and give me guidance, I agreed to help him. I had no idea what evil was in the world and no one to teach me at that age about bad people. Well this minister took me to this shed and molested me, then left me locked in there ( I have no idea what his plans were for me), but thankfully there was this tiny window that I was able to smash out with my foot and escape. I ran home and told my parents, and they did call the police. The man was arrested and it was found he had many many victims, and some were not as lucky as me. The thing with this whole situation is this.... My parents way of dealing with this happening to their daughter was to act like it never happened. It was like the next day everyone acted like nothing had happened to me and back then Therapy was not a well known option as it is now. They never asked me how I was dealing with it, they never talked to me about it, they never mentioned it again. To them it was over but for me it is still not over. Again I learned to deal with a devastating thing on my own. I had to deal with the anger, with the degradation of my own body, with the nightmares (which at times I still have to this day), and with not being able to depend on anyone but myself. I learned that I had to control my feelings. That was how I survived and that is why I am here today. Because I learned how to control and compartmentalize things. I take that anger and put it in a box inside me and keep it locked up. God help those that might be around me if I ever let go of all that anger and rage I have put away for so many years and from so many things that have happened in my life.
So this is how I handle my anger. I learned it as a child, as a teenager and as an adult. It has been the one method that I have control. I have control therefore I survive. For every bad thing that has happened to me in my life (and there are many) I control my emotions, its what I do. So If you see me and talk to me about something that should seem so much more devastating then I let on with my emotions, its because I learned to control my anger and all my other emotions at an early age, and I still use that same method to this day. With every bad thing that I have gone through in my life, I control it, I put it in a place where it cant hurt me, where I don't lose. You see I learned as a child that if you let that anger out, it gives that person that angered you the satisfaction of further hurting you. To me this is letting them win even worse and I refuse to let that happen.
So Yes I have extreme anger over what this doctor did to me with this surgery and his lies, but he has already taken enough of me and I refuse to give him anymore of myself then he has already taken. He has taken my bodily functions, makes me live in constant pain, he has taken my sensation in parts of my body, he has taken the life I used to live and made me live a new life, he has taken my trust of doctors, but I will not ever give him who I am inside, he wont get that from me. I refuse to let him have that part of me., I will be 100% honest, I hate him. I hate him with a passion you could not even imagine, for the lies he told me to get me to consent to a surgery where he gave me inaccurate test results and never told me the risks I would suffer to get his way. I hate him for cutting my nerves and making me live this humiliating life. I hate him for so many reasons that I cannot even express. But I will never give him the satisfaction of knowing that he continuously keeps me from sleeping, from being able to eat, from living the life I should be living if it were not for him. I at least still have control of my emotions (or maybe I dont as much as I would like to at times) and this is why I control what I show to others.
What really gets me as well, is I am not a person that hates. I hate the word hate. Yet there you have it. I hate him, he has made me capable of hating someone, which I thought I could and would never do. When he took my life in his hands with his lies and ruined who I was, he taught me how to hate.
Yet I still can see you and you will wonder why I do not seem as angry as I should. Dont take for granted that I do not feel it, just because you cannot see it, just realize I only have control of it but its still there.
So for my doctor who asked me this question the other day at my appt.(you know who you are) I want to thank you for having me think long and hard about this, and realize that I do still use the tools that I used as a child. So I guess my theory after all was not as accurate as I thought it to be.
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