The evil red eyed step cousin

If jealousy is the green eyed monster then I feel like anger must be a red eyed demon. Some sort of cousin on the emotional spectrum.

Throughout this nightmare process I’ve really not had more than a momentary hesitation worth of anger. I’m not an angry person, you can ask anyone who knows me…or even better yet ask the people who have worked for me. They’ll tell you it takes A LOT to make me angry and even then my reaction is not violent, or vicious. It’s measured, careful, and calm.

Well, this weekend I experienced my first feelings of anger toward my husband. And I have to say the whole situation was very interesting…

I know I mentioned that I had some friends visit on Friday I had not seen them since January and they had a number of thoughtful, concerned questions. The kind, well even some of the exact ones most of you have had over the last few months. A few months ago I found I couldn’t handle more than one of these conversations in a two day span and I had to really carefully plan how and when I told people what was going on.

Immediately after these friends left on Friday someone else dropped by bearing a few new stories about my husband’s recent exploits, immediately after that I got a text that Esme was running a 102 degree fever and on her third nap of the day while she was with her dad.

I went into acupuncture the next day full of great stories about my week, being off of crutches, being able to really clean my house before my friends came over; It had been a good week.  One of the first procedures of acupuncture is when she checks my pulses.  Pretty quickly she asked, is there any chance you’re emotionally depleted?

The events of the day before came rushing back to me….Funny you should ask I say. By early evening yesterday I could barely move off the couch, I was completely exhausted. It was all emotional.

She put my needles in, left the room, and as I lay there. In the moments where I usually feel calm and peace begin to envelope me. This day, instead I found my mind racing. First it raced over everything that had done me in the day before, then before I even realized it the news someone had delivered that morning came rushing at me like a genie out of a bottle.

See, in case I haven’t mentioned it one or two hundred times before now, this town is small…so small that my husband cannot blow his nose without someone calling me thirty seconds later to tell me about it. Just that morning someone shared with me the great news that last week a woman called the local radio station and devoted “Love Me Tender” by Elvis to my husband.

As soon as this genie came oozing out (well, I may have to say in this case it felt a little more like the scene with Jafar in the bottle) it felt like a little explosion. I couldn’t stop my mind from racing. The main thought that kept going around and around was this. “It’s clear by now, that my husband lacks the self control necessary to keep it in his pants, I’ve made peace with that! But I moved to this small town for him, I’ve stayed in this small town so he can be close to his daughter. If he can’t even manage to be discreet about his indiscretions this small town will become unbearable, and quick!”

I WAS ANGRY!

The same thoughts just went round and round…till finally the moment came when I felt like one of those old filmstrip reels…the wheels kept spinning but that little tale of film was just flapping on every round.

I finally was able to breathe deeply, and not long after, I fell asleep for the remainder of my time with the needles.

When the acupuncturist came back my first words (as they almost always are) were “The strangest thing happened…” I told her and said: “were you by chance trying to replenish that emotional energy? Because wherever those needles were you really hit on something.”

That is the crazy thing about acupuncture, her goal she told me was to get the energy moving, you just never know exactly what the body needs and how it will respond, what exactly it is that will move, needs to move, to get you back to healthy.

Well, for me it looks like I needed to move a little anger. I don’t think this chapter is complete. I think these are thoughts I will have to share with my husband. I’m sure there will be more here.

But it felt good to get a little angry…just a little. And I think it will feel even better to have the opportunity to work through it rather than having it build and build to something bigger than the tiny little monster it is now. Boy would I hate to have to experience that full grown Jafar demon.

In any case…I think I’ll go with this, move a little anger, and hopefully it will help me continue to move on.