Screaming At The Top Of My Lungs

Oh, yesterday was a fine day.

Have you ever arrived home so angry you could hardly think?  So angry that you come in the door and nothing seems right - that everything that would not normally bother you has become a personal source of irritation designed to provoke you even more?

It is the sort of anger that builds, one that you carefully keep under wraps all day and try to manage because it is a new year and you are really trying to make a go of things.  You feel it rising and you push it back down, trying to take refuge in the things you can control or what the appropriate response that honors God is.  But things keep building up - not big things as if an avalanche had suddenly buried you but small things as if someone was purposefully building a wall, brick by brick.

You don't realize the wall until after your away for a bit.  Then you turn and suddenly realize that the wall is there - had been there for a while, quietly built behind you while you were trying to make a go of things.  You had just missed the building of it.  And the cliff that is now in front of you gives you nowhere to go.

In your frustration you try to tear the wall down - and discover a second truth, that walls built by others are often very difficult to tear down by yourself.  This increases your frustration even more as your nails chip and your fingertips bloody.    The anger builds as you try to get a grip, your mind gratuitously engaging in the things you would like to say which probably would not solve the problem, but would at least give you a sense of control in the situation - a sense of control that is missing now.

And then everything else simply doesn't seem right.  Things that were slightly out of place become personal insults, simple errors or situations become personal plots against you.  Finally you throw up your hands and decide you are going to bed early, because that is the only resolution to the situation that seems feasible.

Perhaps in bed you try to look at the situation a bit more philosophically, try to put reason and perspective to the situation, maybe even try to map out strategies to deal with it.  But you find that revisiting the situation only reminds you of the wall built behind you and the cliff in front of you - and you relive the emotion all over.

Oh, yesterday was a fine day.