dealing with a lot of baggaged anger
July 24, 2006
catesbool
i had been acting up lately and busy with so much anger spewing off my chest. i easily get upset with people around me and i have such short patience that it seems i easily get mad at the slightest provocation. and i can’t seem to stop myself from spewing off a lot of lava.
nancy tells me that i had to deal with this anger, that no one is causing it except myself. she tells me that other people is not the issue but me, who is making myself this angry.
today, as i start to pack my things again to move out of my room, i begin to really look at myself and ask why am i so angry? why am i dealing with such a lot of anger?
the answers don’t hit me. they just came tumbling out all of a sudden and i am forced to regress back to the years prior to my coming here in the hague…
i built up so much anger and frustration and kept it all bottled up inside me that they are now uncontrollably coming out. i had been dealing with a lot of frustration at the office since 2001. after lmb, former treasurer of the philippines and my former boss, left the office, i had to stay on and battle with office politics because i have a family to feed. my husband had just quit his job and even if i had wanted to quit mine too, i had to think about my little girl too. so, there i was, stuck with the office without any prospects for future employment. i tried looking for a job somewhere but nothing really came through.
so plan b it was. i decided to go to law school while i’m working and gave thistotally uncaring attitude at the office. dorothy, my former boss then, asked me if i was okay with the fact that i will have no promotion for the next three years. and i told her that i couldn’t care less, that i’m just going to stay at the office until i finish law and become a lawyer. and the people at the office can just go to hell with their politics.
by and by, and with so much patience, dorothy weaned me back into the office life. she taught me how to clamp down on my anger even when people at the office are busy trying to pull me down with the rumors they created against me. i couldn’t understand why they twisted so much of my words when i didn’t personally know them from the start and yet, they hated me so much. in the end, i gave up trying to understand and simply worked quietly in my own corner of the world.
and then the surprise came. two years of working and dorothy gave me a promotion when i least expected it. and it made the people around me at the office even more angry and jealous. there were so much dirty maneuverings around that i began to limit my association to only those i trusted. meanwhile, i laboured through law school and dealt with the realities of family life.
then came the endless transitions in the office. and not even consecutive outstanding performances in the office could have protected me and dorothy from being transferred by the new treasurer. not satisfied with just having me transferred to some timbuktu place in the province, one very "brilliant" supervisor in the office (who, by the way, is a consistent bar flunker) filed charges against me and one of my friend in the office for allegedly "deleting files in the office computers which he considered crucial to the operations of the office and hence, the act was called constitutive of theft". the legal service dropped the charges upon finding that the charges have no basis and that the files were really just pictures of the former treasurer and really mundane stuff which these idiots do not have the capacity to replicate.
all the while, i was slowly getting angry and i couldn’t vent out my anger properly. everything about me were falling apart and i was being advised against being angry and i had to clamp down on my anger. my husband told me there was no use being angry, dorothy told me to forgive these people, and all i can do is really sit back and think about filing counter charges against these people.
then this scholarship came and suddenly, it seemed like heaven-sent. i was being given the chance to get away from all of these and i took it.
i packed my bags, ready to take on the world again. then life happened in the netherlands. and i realized how far away i am from the love of my family, that i was grasping at straws here. that in five months time, i am going back to that world where i am surrounded by love but that love is never going to be enough to protect me from these people again. and because of my family, i will again force myself to accept my circumstances and work my way towards two more years of law school and the financial burden of keeping a family. and that whatever happens, i will have to take on a brave front and pretend to grin and bear everything again.
and i’m so tired. so tired of keeping everything together. so tired of expectations. so tired of keeping myself focused because i need to and not because i want to. i’m so tired of trying to create choices for myself when othe people are trying to limit mine. and all this tiredness without rest is making me so angry i am unable to cope.
and i am not sure if i can do these things all over again. i want to go home but home is a place where i will have to take on my expected role again. home is where i can hold my daughter again but it is also where i would have to confront the reality of being a responsible mother who must look after her even if it meant having to deal with a lot of pressure at work.
i’m not sure if i can do these again…
i’m not sure if i can keep up with a lot of anger that has to be bottled up all over again because i have promises to keep and my choices are being limited.
i don’t want to be angry anymore. but even as i try to get over my anger, my realities back home are always creeping in and even here, i need to confront them.
i’m tired of being angry. i’m tired of keeping everything bottled up. i’m tired…
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