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Furious Anger
Sep. 17th, 2013 10:22 pm"We boil at different degrees." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a red head, I've experienced a number of biases from various people about what kind of person my hair color makes me. We're known for our sensitivity to the sun (true in my case), that we have no souls (I guess the jury is still out on that one), we're unlucky (not true), that we're delicate when it comes to giving blood (turned out to be true for me) and that we're prone to fits of fury. That last one is true for me as well, though I've largely learned to control it.
I don't know if my hair color has anything to do with my temper but it certainly exists. When I was a kid it used to be a berserker kind of anger. I remember times when my vision would go red and I'd sort of red-out. After the damage was done I'd come to with my jaw aching from having clenched my teeth and find something broken, often my knuckles reddened from punching something (a tree or a fence or a wall) and usually I was in trouble.
Even when I was quite young that temper got the best of me at times, to the point where my mom actually got me a cheap punching bag for my 8th birthday. Of course, my sister ended up breaking it but it was nice while it lasted.
I stopped the red-out incidents when I was a 17 or so but shortly after I started the whole dating thing I sometimes got so frustrated and angry that I'd find something in-animate and punch the shit out of it. I had enough presence of mind to usually punch things that are tougher than my fists. During one particularly agonizing summer I regularly beat the crap out of my 1969 baja bug after some asshole backed into the passenger door and dented the crap out of it. I couldn't do any more damage to it and it was really satisfying to beat on it until my knuckles bled.
Once I got into my mid-twenties I stopped beating on things until things started falling apart with my long-term relationship. As angry as I got, I never wanted to punch a person. It was more of a desire to replace the emotional pain with a physical one and there's just something really satisfying about exploding at something that couldn't really be hurt. My knuckles might hurt pretty badly but it usually cleared my head completely. I had to stop that after I beat on a cement wall so hard that I actually broke a small muscle in my hand and made it extremely difficult to type. Typing is my livelihood so I had a little self-intervention and resolved to stop being such a moron.
In all the years since (almost ten now, in fact) I've only rarely punched something and never hard enough to do more than bruise. That fury is still there sometimes and it can overwhelm me but I've almost completely removed the physical from my reactions. To this day I've never punched a person and it's been a few years since I've punched anything but air. Progress.
I think that ultimately the thing that turns the pressure on the most is my own frustration with myself. Knowing that I could have, should have handled something better. If I lose my temper the immediate reaction afterwords is one of guilt and self-recrimination. I view the explosion of anger as a failure. Anger may be a valid emotion but what you do with the anger is something else entirely. I want to feel my anger and act accordingly with conscious intent. I don't ever want anger to force me into action because it is then that the real damage is done.
So whether my temper is a byproduct of my hair color (or the genes that render my hair red) is irrelevant. How I handle that temper is up to me. Even if I sometimes handle it poorly, I get a great deal of comfort out of knowing that in this, at least, I am improving.
As a red head, I've experienced a number of biases from various people about what kind of person my hair color makes me. We're known for our sensitivity to the sun (true in my case), that we have no souls (I guess the jury is still out on that one), we're unlucky (not true), that we're delicate when it comes to giving blood (turned out to be true for me) and that we're prone to fits of fury. That last one is true for me as well, though I've largely learned to control it.
I don't know if my hair color has anything to do with my temper but it certainly exists. When I was a kid it used to be a berserker kind of anger. I remember times when my vision would go red and I'd sort of red-out. After the damage was done I'd come to with my jaw aching from having clenched my teeth and find something broken, often my knuckles reddened from punching something (a tree or a fence or a wall) and usually I was in trouble.
Even when I was quite young that temper got the best of me at times, to the point where my mom actually got me a cheap punching bag for my 8th birthday. Of course, my sister ended up breaking it but it was nice while it lasted.
I stopped the red-out incidents when I was a 17 or so but shortly after I started the whole dating thing I sometimes got so frustrated and angry that I'd find something in-animate and punch the shit out of it. I had enough presence of mind to usually punch things that are tougher than my fists. During one particularly agonizing summer I regularly beat the crap out of my 1969 baja bug after some asshole backed into the passenger door and dented the crap out of it. I couldn't do any more damage to it and it was really satisfying to beat on it until my knuckles bled.
Once I got into my mid-twenties I stopped beating on things until things started falling apart with my long-term relationship. As angry as I got, I never wanted to punch a person. It was more of a desire to replace the emotional pain with a physical one and there's just something really satisfying about exploding at something that couldn't really be hurt. My knuckles might hurt pretty badly but it usually cleared my head completely. I had to stop that after I beat on a cement wall so hard that I actually broke a small muscle in my hand and made it extremely difficult to type. Typing is my livelihood so I had a little self-intervention and resolved to stop being such a moron.
In all the years since (almost ten now, in fact) I've only rarely punched something and never hard enough to do more than bruise. That fury is still there sometimes and it can overwhelm me but I've almost completely removed the physical from my reactions. To this day I've never punched a person and it's been a few years since I've punched anything but air. Progress.
I think that ultimately the thing that turns the pressure on the most is my own frustration with myself. Knowing that I could have, should have handled something better. If I lose my temper the immediate reaction afterwords is one of guilt and self-recrimination. I view the explosion of anger as a failure. Anger may be a valid emotion but what you do with the anger is something else entirely. I want to feel my anger and act accordingly with conscious intent. I don't ever want anger to force me into action because it is then that the real damage is done.
So whether my temper is a byproduct of my hair color (or the genes that render my hair red) is irrelevant. How I handle that temper is up to me. Even if I sometimes handle it poorly, I get a great deal of comfort out of knowing that in this, at least, I am improving.
