This essay is actually going to be on one of the subjects I fear the most: myself. Everyone has witnessed their inner monster, and mine scares the living shit out of me. Mine only comes out rarely, but when it does I, if you can understand what I mean, seem to fade away, to be replaced by a beast of hate and fear.
It really, really sucks.
Have you ever had this happen to you, reader? Just suddenly, without warning, lash out at the world? I bet you’ve done it at least once as well.
For me, the strangest thing brings out my beast, and enters me into the Red Zone: my parents. They tend to yell if a question is repeated (days later, mind you), they like to alternatively put down my efforts or tell me to begin trying, and they seem to not listen to me.
Of course, if this essay were just grievances against my parents, it would last a good 30 pages!
No, it’s more like when they used to do this, all I could do was pin myself up into my room and despair. Maybe cry, maybe just play Civilization 3 very sadly and mournfully, but it was always something. Eventually, though, I would go into little fits of rage inside my room. This started Freshman year, which I’ve always called Shit Year.
Eventually, the little fits of rage got larger and larger, until one day not even my room could contain them. I just burst out one day, walked up to my mother, and screamed my pain out.
This was one of the worst things ever.
She started to cry, right in front of me. Sobbing, in fact. Instantly, my demon subsided, and I was thrust back into my blue zone of calm, and I felt like a dirty shit, to say the very least. So I went into my room and I cried. Sobbed, in fact. (Really, my mother and I are a lot more similar than I would ever care to admit) Soon enough, I stepped out to apologize.
Well, it started out like that. If my Mom hadn’t been in the back room with my Dad telling him how I had hit, actually HIT, her, I may have just apologized and dropped it. But instead, she was insisting that I had smacked her in the face, which I thankfully did not do. So I yelled some more, a kind of passive-aggressive rant in which I apologized for yelling but screamed about her lies and cursed them. In the end, (half an hour later, 25 minutes of it being a 2-way sulk) my Dad defused the situation, thank heaven.
That was my first major experience with the Red Zone. Since then, I’ve had a few encounters with it, but nothing quite as bad. Of course, I thought it was always lurking underneath the surface.
Thankfully, one of my friends showed me how to truly relax. Relaxing isn’t turning off your mind, it isn’t necessarily a nap, relaxing is simply doing something you love to do that’s very fun. You go and sit with buddies and make up fanciful stories and adventures that last from a second to 50,000 light years (even though it’s a distance), or you go and play soccer, or you go and play on the swings. Whatever floats your boat!
Right now, in fact, my Red Zone seems practically gone. It still boils and bubbles up now and then, but now that I’ve learned how to chill it off it has no power.
And of course, getting rid of that isn’t the only benefit of relaxing. The greatest is the relaxing itself! You’ll feel better, be nicer, and feel much happier with your life! So once again, I find myself nearly thankful of my past mistakes.
Oh yes, I know what you're talking about. Losing control + feeling of familial hatred = worst thing ever.
ReplyDeleteAnd let me take this opportunity to say that I'm surprised you're not always a raging ball of fury sometimes. People give you so much crap all the time, and I admire to no end your patience in dealing with it.
Dude, I just chill! Venting by talk is probably one of my best ones, actually, so that always helps. I've kinda conquered that, I guess, but I'm still not sure how.
ReplyDelete