Epiphany of sorts ...

Yesterday I had an epiphany concerning an aspect of myself that has long puzzled me. I often experience unexpectedly deep rage reactions to something basically very insignificant – like having to wait three or four months for new movies to be released, or TV shows to be broadcast, or when a smooth, well-groomed woman in a large shiny car cuts in front of me on the road. At these times, when things like this happen, I get so angry, I feel like screaming and crying and climbing the walls with frustration and rage.

On the surface, it seems absurd, doesn’t it?

But, in talking to my daughter yesterday, I wondered out loud what it was all about, and I said, Gee,  it feels like a child throwing a temper tantrum because it feels all deprived. And that was it! That is exactly how I was feeling and that is exactly where it was coming from.

I grew up eldest in a family of four kids. Dad worked long hours at a stressful job for less than wonderful pay and Mom was a SAHM. Money was tight, and while we never went without, luxuries were for Christmas and birthdays. My best friend in junior school was the youngest of four in a well-off family, and whenever I came home from visiting her, home seemed most unsatisfactory. Kids are so horribly mercenary, aren’t they? Our family wasn’t perfect, and neither was hers, but they had more money! On top of that, I was a shy, clever, non-sporty child, severely lacking in confidence and very introverted, and I always felt like I never quite fitted in. Like there’d be trials for the netball team. I’d persuade my friend to stay with me after school and try-out; she’d get in, I wouldn’t. Picking sides for games – I’d be amongst the last to be picked. A party was on, and I wasn’t invited.

Very early in life, I learnt to feel envy, and a failure, and what it was like to be not wanted.

In my teens and twenties, relationships were few and far between – mostly never-go-anywhere connections with friends of boyfriends of more popular girls, plus two relationships based solely on lust, accompanied in one instance by emotional abuse, which I, in my ignorance, thought was just ‘how he was’. And because he was also intellectual, physically appealing and liked sleeping with me, I thought I was in love with him.

(Speaking of love, my baby sister fell in love and got married long before I did – they’re about to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary. They live in a great house, both kids are at varsity, she earned her degree along the way and teaches high school now, and they’re all active in church life. I married later, divorced within ten years, am still alone and have nothing except my house as security for my ‘old age’. My kids, however, are fabulous and I’m doing my best to make sure they don’t inherit an emotional legacy of envy, failure and regret.)

All this helps me to understand why, when something makes me feel like I’m being overlooked, left out or in some way ‘deprived’, I get these insane reactions that are completely over the top… reactions that make me want to scream ‘unfair, unfair’. It’s that damned unhappy little girl still battling with the emotions of yesterday. Shit! How do you get rid of stuff like that?

All this relates to some degree to what my next post is going to be about – a continuation of that Open Letter to God I posted awhile back …

Tbc

Elleann.