MY EXPERIENCE WITH ANGER

Growing up, the only person that made me see the bad side of anger was my dad. I became so scared that it became traumatic for me. I washed my dad doing all sorts of things in anger and a lot of the time, I saw him regret his actions. One time he was having a quarrel with my mum and he took a very expensive phone he got for her, slammed it on the ground and made sure the phone was unrepairable. The picture of that day is still in my memory, and if I must admit, he made me scared of him. Another time he was angry and he beat me to the point I was bleeding from my eyes. I was about 9 or 10 years old then, and the painful thing was that he beat me based on an assumption. At that point I felt my dad hated me, but in reality he was just angry. When he realized he was in the wrong, he bought a lot of things to compensate for the things he did. At first it was a happy site to behold, but over time I became pained. I saw him do worse to my mum and then beg for days, but it became tiring at a point.

Image by Rochak Shukla on Magnific

Unknowingly to me, I was already traumatized and I never knew until I started dating someone with anger issues. I would do anything to avoid her anger. If I thought keeping quiet would not get her angry (even though she still ends up getting angry) I will stay shut and allow things slide. Things I wouldn’t condole I started allowing because in truth I was still scared of her anger. It wasn’t because she was abusive, it was because I had been traumatized and any style of aggressive anger made me see my dad. I remember secret nights when my dad dealt with me and I cried to sleep, and before I even knew what was happening, she was sleeping while I was crying. She might have even forgotten that she was angry, but I was busy remembering how I felt as a child. I could not speak up because as a child, I couldn’t speak up, and I watched it slowly destroy me from the inside and when I talked, it made a simple matter look bigger than it was because I could not help but see it with the mind of the 10 year old me.

Anger isn’t something I can manage in a relationship, before I started dating I could count the number of times I have gotten angry in one hand, but after dating someone with anger issues I realized that anger in itself is contagious, because sometimes you will get angry because they are angry at you and there is nothing you can do. The anger I hate most is the one that comes from too many complaints and little provocation. Things that are not worth getting angry about somehow has a very good justification for anger, it goes way more than what happens to how the person sees whatever happened. At that point you do things praying they don’t see it in a bad way and get angry. I find it tiring sometimes, especially when you have to defend yourself and sanctions every single time because you do not want the other person to get angry. Short temper is something I would not want to experience ever again.

THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S
PROMPT FOR WEEK 218 EPISODE 1