Category Archives: anger

Cries and Sighs

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in anger, boundaries, conflicts, courage, depression, faith

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Let my cries and sighs heal me and restore me and bring me to joy. Let me never again succumb to bitterness or depressing thoughts, God, show me life’s meaning. (Rebbe Nachman of Breslow)

This coming Friday will mark the anniversary of my father’s suicide, gone now for seventeen years.  The calendar this year is the same as it was that year, with Easter coming the week before he died. I am so grateful for the space of time between his death and now. The first year after he died, I was caught—every day— in the rawness of grief, and in the post-traumatic-stress of losing him to suicide.  The second and third years the grief washed in and out like the tide. I suffered with periodic depressions all through the year. Now it’s mostly around Easter and his death date.

Things still remind me of his suicide.  I’ve worked at desensitizing my tender feelings as much as possible, but every year around this time, I feel irritable and emotional. Movies, books, family, friends, and Easter are big reminders. Some little thing like my husband not listening to me will tie me in knots for days.

A minister where I used to go to church did that suicide-mimicking thing from the pulpit.  I finally drummed up enough courage to let him know the way he joked up there during his sermons bothered me.  He reacted insensitively, and said I needed to get over my dad’s suicide. I stared at him, pushing back the desire to jump up and leave. I stared at him, thinking of every cuss word in my large profane vocabulary. I think I stared at him for a long, long time. It might have only been a minute.  But my knees were weak and my mouth was speechless.  Finally, we started talking, beyond my anger at his quick remark and his callousness, beyond his reaction that I was criticizing his sermons. He apologized. He said, still, he was trying to tell me I needed to live in joy and not let things hurt so.

I wish I could say that his insensitivity is the reason I left his church. It’s so much easier to blame someone than to look deep within, and I did kinda do that for a while. But things always go deeper. Every year, I want to not do this holiday. I want to push past Easter. I want to push past the anniversary of Daddy’s suicide.  I hear how people say they are so grateful for Jesus dying on the cross for their salvation.  His dying breaks my heart, and guilt pours out of me nearly as much as the year Daddy died. I can’t say I am grateful for anyone dying for me. Mostly, my feelings just hurt.

I feel defensive that I don’t want to celebrate Easter. It seems to announce, in my mind anyway, I’m not a Christian and that I don’t love Jesus.  My epiphany today: If I didn’t love Jesus (or my dad), I wouldn’t have this grief swirling around in my brain.

     God listens, loves, and heals a grieving heart.

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Family Reactions

17 Friday Jun 2011

Posted by in anger, family, forgiveness, powerlessness, reactions, suicide

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            The weekend between my father’s death and his funeral, my mother’s house was filled with people.  Extended family, friends, neighbors, they all came.  I appreciated most of the support, except from one aunt.  She, like me, was filled with the need to take care of my mother.  It became a sick competition between us.  I resented her help.  I felt she should back off.  Uneasy, she talked too much.
Everything she said came out wrong or inconsiderate.  She bragged on how nice my husband was and how she wished we had children—knowing I couldn’t get pregnant.  She realized her insensitivity and apologized.  Conversationally, she said someone she was close to suffered from depression and thought he might kill himself, too.  Her comments seemed casual to me.  I couldn’t process the things she said.  In my mind, it had only been a few hours since I had just found Daddy’s body.  
At first, I felt hammered by her words and listened in shocked silence.  Then my anger spewed forth.  It didn’t come out so much in my words as how I said them.  I bore down on her—leveling my eyes upon her like an aggressive dog on the verge of attack.  She went flying out of the room, crying.
            Even though we were in a reactive state of mind, the resentment stayed with me for a long time.  Slowly, I realized I had been using her as a safety valve for my anger—anger that Daddy had been so selfish, that he had left his body for me to find, that I sat there feeling so powerless.  She was a safe target, a scapegoat; I knew she loved me.  Later, I apologized. She said there was nothing to apologize for.  She was right.  We were all so full of grief. 
Grieving people say and do stupid things.  Grieving people react just as stupidly.  We hurt each other.  Be thankful.  Understanding or not, we become great teachers in the lessons of forgiveness. 

My First Flashback–Salmon and Godzilla

13 Monday Jun 2011

Posted by in anger, flashbacks, suicide

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            My first flashback came after cooking supper and then going to a movie. 
 “This is probably the last thing Daddy had to eat,” I told my husband while I fried the salmon patties.  “How do you know that?” he asked.  “Because Mom was heating up their leftovers for lunch when I found him; I’m not sure if he had breakfast.” I said.  Somehow I sidestepped then reliving the memory.  
After supper my husband left his plate in the sink and hurried to get dressed.  We were going to see a remake, Godzilla 2000.  Cleaning the kitchen, I got mad, “I’m not your damned maid, you know.”  His only defense was a smile.  I swallowed my anger, halfway smiled, and got ready for the movie, too.
            In one scene of the movie, Godzilla was shot.  It moaned and fell face-forward.  Its head was cocked to one side with its forelimb crumpled under its body.  Jumping at the shot, I thought, “That’s how Daddy was laying when I found him.”  The death scene had just completed the brain-circuit for my flashback—from salmon patties to Godzilla.  In my mind, all over again, I found my father’s body. 
I jumped up and ran out of the theater.  My husband followed me.  In the hall, I tried to convince him I was okay.  “Just go back in; I’ll be back.  I just need a minute.  It’s only a movie—for God sake,” I said, but my hands shook.  I was angry, frightened, and didn’t want him hovering over me.  “Let’s just go,” he said. “Fine,” I answered, jerked away from him and walked toward the door.
Outside in the truck, my mouth began an uncontrollable quiver.  Sweat soaked through my clothes.  It soaked my scalp.  It rolled like tears from my armpits to my waist while I hyperventilated.  We sat there till my breath came back.  I felt like I was losing my mind.
                        Emotions and physical reactions to traumatic stress are like piling a bunch of small bouncing-balls in a box.  They bang into each other and go everywhere.  It’s easy for you and others to think you’re crazy.  You’re not crazy.  You’re normal.  Talk about it with someone who listens.

Post-Traumatic Stress—Movies, TV, Anger

12 Sunday Jun 2011

Posted by in anger, movies, numbness, Post-Traumatic Stress, TV

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            My favorite TV shows and movies bothered me after Daddy died.  High suspense stories didn’t interest me anymore.  Comedies weren’t funny.  Sad movies broke my heart too much.  That visual art medium intensely triggered my feelings in the beginning.  My heart pounding, I would rush to the bathroom wishing to vomit out the stirred memories.  Mostly, I just stared at the clear water in the toilet.  Later I simply disconnected my attention from TV shows or from a movie.  I usually drifted into thought, or maybe went to the kitchen during some action packed scene.  Dullness served its purpose for a while.  I wasn’t feeling anything.
            Then the determined anger came.  I felt it toward my father and with myself, too, that I couldn’t even get lost in a story.  So I set about the task of desensitizing, watching my favorites over and over again till I wore a callous over the ultra-sensitive nubs of my mind.   Hardening myself, I purposely watched even the hardest parts of murder and mayhem.  But the suicide themes, they were definitely off the list.  Some things can be taken too far.
My ever-protecting husband many times tried to change the channel—for me.  I got angry at him, too.  I took back the remote control and flicked the channel with my single intention.  I didn’t want suicide to ruin everything fun in my life.  I would watch what I wanted, damn it.
 Anger is an emotion of enormous power.  Filled with robust, bursting energy, it’s the spark that sets the flame.  Just as the mind mercifully shuts down in self- defense, anger can push it back right into reality. 

Important Relationship

02 Thursday Jun 2011

Posted by in anger, marriage, professional help, relationships, suicide

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            My marriage was only three years old when Daddy died.  It was my second marriage.  I was frightened my grief would tear it apart.  Those intense emotions of heartache, traumatic stress, and fury funneled their way down to one emotional pipeline and spilled out in angry, watery, aggressive reactions.  I couldn’t control my feelings and acted like a tired, cranky two-year-old child.   I felt embarrassed to cry, but tears traveled down my face in rivers.  Grief left me looking sulky.
My husband became a safe target.  Most of my anger was focused at him over trivial things.  We painted the house together and I furiously blamed him for leaving a paint-can in my way.  He worked a split shift and was sleep deprived; I yelled at him for not listening.
            My father’s suicide taught my husband and me how to communicate.  We had a lot to digest.  He didn’t understand why I was so quick-tempered, and he would react defensively.  I didn’t recognize how tremendously angry he was with my father for hurting me.  He tried to keep those feelings to himself; they came across to me as condemnation.  We had a lot of conflict—and, thank God, ended up going for professional help.
Anger, I realized, had always been my method of dealing with uncontrollable things.  That realization and my husband’s loving concern may well have been what saved our marriage.  A counselor helped teach us both how to interpret our feelings.   I learned it was because I felt safe enough with him that I centered much of my grieving fury at him.  It wasn’t fair of me to do that.  He learned that I needed to be held when I acted like a child, not walked away from. In counseling, we talked out our feelings without so much emotional-fuel.   
Afterwards, he was there for me all the way.  He hugged me, and gave me space when I needed it.  But most importantly, he listened to me when I experienced my anger-disguised emotions of helplessness.  At a support group for families affected by suicide, he learned that my anger wasn’t as unique as he thought.  My tears came with less anger after they stopped meeting his resistance.  
            After a suicide, communication and emotional support is as necessary as water and air.