Consider the title a sort of joke. We did a reading tonight on the dangers inherent to anger, with a focus on justified anger, which seems… well… justified. There are any number of things that can make a person angry, or to form resentments.

A concept that was introduced to me only well into my adult life, that states firmly that if someone or something is getting under my skin then the problem is me and not whatever or whomever I am angry with. It amounted at the moment, in which I was filled with what I would have considered well-justified rage, to the very last thing that I wanted to hear. It took an awfully long time to understand what the speaker was getting at, and it was an idea/ideal that I had to circle around and then back into.

It was explained more clearly later on in my travels as simply that justified anger would kill me, and that it was best reserved for those adults who are more capable of coping with it. It took a long while for it to sink in that most of my anger was far out of proportion to the stimulus provoking it, and that my hyperbolic reaction was more a reflection of my emotional condition than it was to anyone or anything. It was rarely, if ever, in response to a dire circumstance or any life or death matter. It was often a case of just “one more fucking thing,” or the straw that broke the camel’s back.

It was the result of never letting go of anything.

Were I in a 12 steps recovery program for anger, it could safely be said that I had begun a slow relapse about six weeks ago. I allowed situations to build and they gained their own momentum and gravity, and eventually became overwhelming and I was caught in the throes of a slow boil that lasted weeks. A moment of clarity came only at some point last week when the realization came upon me that it was having an effect on people around me. It wasn’t a question of blowing up on them or mistreating them in any way, but one of seeing that my energy was being transferred onto them. They let their own anxieties loose, and their own frustrations. We were all venting freely with an utter disregard to examining possible solutions of our own or for the group. We were snowballing and it was a phenomenon that I was largely responsible for.

I was being “that guy.”

A moment of clarity.

I was the guy in a position to have positive influence and squandering it with selfish outbursts. I was acting out.

I was becoming/had become toxic.

I was abusing my position among people for whom I could have been of assistance. So consider this a confession then.

A confession.

This topic should be revisited, in the interest of mindfulness. The best way for me to address my condition now would be self-care in the form of sleep. This can be revisited at some point to address the specific stimuli prodding me, the emotional picadors lancing my shoulders.