I lost a battle with my own anger. It, more than: loneliness, sadness, depression, anxiety, lack of a will to live, confusion, memory loss, or disability, erodes my normal rational being. Anger is an actionable emotion. It inspires me to do things, and I find myself absorbing it frequently. While that in and of itself isn’t horrible, I am also not provided the means to properly address it. It’s the combination of the two which ultimately leads to the aforementioned erosion and, eventually, an eruption.
I am a communicator. I am a problem solver. I am a visionary (as much as I can be). It’s actually not hard for me to address my anger, I am not a ‘blind abstract rage’ kind of person. I’m laser-focused, intensely angry at specific things. That anger builds up over time as existing problems fail to be solved or even addressed. The longer there is no effort, the more my anger builds. As a very lonely person, I seem to spend much of my life finding work-arounds now. I try to find things to maintain my calm exterior while I wait for the opportunity to address what I feel I need to in the way I wish to: calm, controlled, relaxed, patient, step-by-step. The complete antithesis of an explosion.
I vent my anger in little tidbits, a sentence here or there. A caption. An abrupt ending to a conversation (aka me walking away rather than saying something damaging). Those little pressure vents don’t solve problems. They don’t even address problems, at best they might identify a facet of something. Even then, I’m relying on someone else to care enough to pick up on it and do something with it. So, years later, I’ve become one of the things I tried so hard not to – A Veteran Time Bomb. An angry man that doesn’t have to be angry, and is further angered by that. Vicious cycle. I see the missed opportunities: concerts that I should have been able to go to, birthdays and holidays that I was all but forgotten on, a phone that never rings. I understand things I never wanted to: the cynicism of previous generations of veterans who feel they’ve been abandoned, the anger of people who used to be good men but have since given up their moral compass (I haven’t), the apathy of people who have been used and discarded – those that use sarcasm as a default method of communication. I get it. When your memories are filled with a lot of negativity, it’s easy to become that mirror and reflect what you receive.
Ending 1: What’s the solution? At this point, wouldn’t the problems have been resolved? I’ve certainly been trying. I’ve been bashing my head against the wall trying to be heard, trying to get through. How long does one keep trying to use: Time, Honesty, and Effort (THE Attributes) to set a foundation and get rejected before you acknowledge it’s not going to work and let it go? If things were going to change, why haven’t they already? More importantly, why hasn’t there been effort to change? If I’m the only one putting forth the effort, I am doomed to fail, and I am doomed to a perpetual cycle of anger until apathy takes hold.
This is nothing new. Look at my main gallery names (there were a couple others not listed), it’s written even in my titles.
2016 – Irrelevance
2015 – The Legacy of Loneliness
2014 – Invalidation
2013 – The Double-Edged Vacuum
2012 – The Wounded
2011 – The Invisible
2010 – Lessons for the Pre-Deceased
2009 – From War to Wisdom
Pre-2009 – Dissenting Corridors
Ending 2: Now for the good news. In my heart I know it’s not too late for me. I’m a very (ridiculously) simple person at heart. A fair (as in decent, acceptable) amount of effort and reciprocity would change my outlook on things entirely. I’m not asking for guaranteed success. I’m not asking for abstract optimism. I’m asking for what I give to be given back. What do I give? I think I give people basic human things: time, honesty, and effort. We can build an awful lot from those three things. I can talk about how I feel I’m a sincere person, and I follow-up on things, and I’m reliable and sensitive and resourceful and…, and I can try to be positive about myself but everything I just mentioned can be deconstructed back into THE attributes. Get it? T.H.E. attributes. Yeah, yeah. I know.
~Monk Anchorwind
April 2016
Note: The Picture is a remake of one of my favourite pictures taken a long time ago in a memory far far away.