I don’t get truly angry often but when I do, let me tell you it is remarkable to see (if I do say so my damn self! Haha!). Sometimes, I am amazed by the virulence of my anger. It is incredible to think that in that moment of annoyance, my mind is honestly actively blocked to objective reasoning. The only thing I can and will hear is my own subjective wisdom. My anger festers…and I like it to fester wellllllll so that it builds to the point where it feels justified. I try to be fair and so I don’t want to waste energy on anger if it can’t be justified. I don’t get properly angry often and so I guess when it does happen, it should be worth it, no? Lol. When I am angry, I won’t tell a lie, I like confrontation. I want us to get it all out there and get it over with.

I think I might be a hot head. Hmmm…

On Tuesday, something happened that to everyone else seemed so little but man, I was livid. Like stark, raving, lunatic-rabid-howl-at-full-moon angry. WHAT?! I felt so cheated by the situation and just couldn’t help pouring my tale of woe out to all who asked. Funny thing, much as they thought I wanted their opinion and advice on what to do, I didn’t…I just wanted them to be quiet and listen or at the very least, just agree with me and further justify my anger.

The thing is my anger simmers almost as quickly as it is inflamed. However unlike the other women in my family, my anger is not porous. I tend to internalise the after-effects of my vexation while my sisters and mum, and even grandma, have the tendency to ventilate and end things at that. They don’t really hold on to things, especially Anita. As a child, it always surprised me how breezily and indeed, how often she forgave me. I on the other hand, although I would forgive, I could still recite her faults in detail, in alphabetical order, chronologically and in reverse numbering. Yes, really.

I remember when I was a child, about 8 or 9 years old, my daddy spoke to me once about my difficulty with letting things go. He said, and I still remember the confusion on his face, “…other children get angry and let things go, but Nkem you don’t. You always remember.” “Well excuse the hell out of me for my excellent memory!” is what I might have said if I was older…and I would have received the smack to smack the mother of all smacks if I ever dared. That aside, I know what he meant. I will forgive… but I find it hard to forget and so I will replay the situation in my head over and over again to psycho-analyse it in its entirety, to inspect things from an objective position when the initial fury has subsided.

(I think that might have something to do with control and a desire for perfection. I have to think more on it…but I’m profiling myself and I think I might be sounding more and more like a psychopath. Lol! No more Criminal Minds for me!…NOT).

In fact, when I am angry I do this trick in a bid to control my annoyance and make sure it’s fair and rational to be upset. I try to quiet and center myself first, then I inspect my anger before it fully consumes me. So, on that Tuesday I initially began by listing what exactly about the action triggered my anger.

I wrote: “Am I Angry or Upset? What exactly is making me angry about this? But I already made up my mind before that I wouldn’t care either way, after all I didn’t want it that much anyways. I think I’m just a little disappointed. Why though? Did I expect too much? Anyways, I’m not angry, I FEEL OK…I.AM.OK! Ugh, I’m not. I lost, they won. Now they’ll gloat and gloat. Arrgggghhh…I hate this…I’m sulking..ugh. Am I sulking just because I didn’t get my way? Am I being too dramatic? I’m quite dramatic. A little… Arrggh this is annoying. I’m just going to shrug and walk away.”

Walking away, that’s almost always my initial final decision to anything that infuriates me. I throw up my hands and stroll off in a bid to avoid a confrontation. I would love to say I do this because I am mature and level-headed…I wish. I am an alpha female on some level and I am sort of a hot head…I try to walk away initially because I have a tendency to doubt the purity, the veracity of my feelings, of myself and so often I wonder if underlying my anger for instance, there is just pride and a bruised ego? Or when I am hurt I question my emotions and wonder if perhaps I was unfairly expecting too much from the other person, and so on. So for me it’s important to walk away and distill my emotions to get to the root cause before I show anger.

The problem is… anger still remains even after the distilling, justified or not. At that point, its up to me to just try to not let it spill out if its not justified or even sensible anger. If it’s not justified anger, I bottle it in and try to ensure it passes. When I am assured that it is indeed ‘righteous’ anger, I allow it flow freely and lowkey revel in it because I’ll be honest, I enjoy anger if I feel like I’m fighting a justified battle. Lol.

I am strange.

But all of this story was to get to this point; What I Discovered About Anger from Tuesday. Good ladies and fine gentlemen, I have realised that anger is just a doorway, all it does is provide access. Anger is therefore bad and pointless (but you already knew that).

An interesting thing is that many Christians believe that since the bible says the devil comes to “…steal, kill and destroy”, he is going to swoop down merciless and violent, but totally obvious and predictable, to wreak havoc on our peaceful existence. And so we pray out of that eventuality. But the devil is clever and cunning, he doesn’t need to take you out in one fell swoop…that guy has time, he will try to outwit and outwait you, he will gradually and silently prey on your mind, your thoughts, your opinions about yourself. If he changes how you view yourself, he can change how you see the world. We pray amiss. We pray for protection from all of the swooping of the devil in his lexus chariots winged with demon fire and we pray for provision but how often do we pray for understanding? Understanding holds the key to insight, to self-awareness and eventually self-love.

When we love ourselves, we hold ourselves in such high esteem that there is so much we not only will NOT do, but we also become so deliberate in what we even permit to enter into our precious mental space. And so the devil has to find another way to get us down because we are too aware of ourselves and the power we carry, too protective to permit even those gentle, subtle attacks on our minds. So the devil has to find cracks in the system.

Anger is one of those cracks.

Anger is a chink in the armour that permits waste to infiltrate your mental space. Don’t hold on to anger, I am learning, it causes other greater, far more dangerous emotions to fester in your mind space. Before you can even stop yourself, you are drowning in self-pity, drunk on a potent cocktail of bitterness, resentment and envy….with a splash of that fiery righteous anger. This is honestly very hard to do. I found that even yesterday morning, I was still in a funk over what had annoyed me on Tuesday. I prayed and thought I’d let it go but found that for most of the day yesterday, I was irritable and snappy…still suffering from Post Traumatic Stress disorder, Angry version.

Even. After. Praying.

It takes work. It takes commitment. It takes the desire to free from being entangled by your emotions, by any means necessary. It takes UNDERSTANDING. I thank God because although I am still struggling with unruly emotions, I don’t struggle at the same pace I used to struggle at before. Kneegroes and gentlefolk, I believe That. Is. Progress!

Amen sambahday! Lol.

Here are a few facts I got from my daily devotional, Girlfriends in God, on dueling with the devil (our every single moment is a fight against evil, no one is immune).

1. The enemy cheats.

a. The enemy slings more than just what you bargained for/fairly expected he’d use to fight.
b. The enemy has great aim.
c. The enemy’s attacks sometimes leave scars.
d. The enemy is not playing a game.

Photo credit: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/vintage%20pastel