This is the point in the week where I should have had some kind of comical accident or dislocation that I can pretend to sulk about while secretly laughing at myself. Unfortunately due to a joyful combination of infection, acute pain and a shiny new inability to stand up without falling over there has been very little chance of comic accidents more than average time for thinking. Having finally recovered from the infection just in time for surgery I have found that the treatment for the infection and pain (basically staying in bed hoping that the pain would go away) has likely kicked off the wonderful symptoms of POTS (basically the shiny new inability to stand up without falling over).
So all of this leaves me desperately seeking inspiration for something to write about other than how crappy EDS can be! Right now the only inspiration I have is...insert idea here...I’m sure there was one as some point but it seems to have wandered off! Ah yes, that’s where it went!
Upon finishing The Last Dragonslayer (a fantastically good book by the way) and in the middle of a major sulk (apparently I have developed the ability to sulk about a situation, something I can’t manage when attempting to sulk in response to a person!) I remembered an essay I wrote about the disproportionate relationship between the expression of female anger and the results of said expression. In the case of the protagonist of The Last Dragonslayer the result was a very good one but it still seems that in general there is a lot less acceptance for female loss of temper than there is for males.
As a person with a very volatile temper that it has taken many years of training and pillow punching to learn to control it irritates me that it is almost accepted that men get angry but there still seems to be the antiquated notion that somehow unseemly for a woman to do so. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way advocating for anger, loss of temper or violence, if I was I wouldn’t have put myself through the agony of learning to control my temper. The thing that I don’t understand is why is it more acceptable for men? Ideally I would like it if everyone could learn to control their temper but having inherited my temper from someone who never did learn to control his I am fully aware that this is a dream that will never be realised. But on the topic of inheritance it does also confuse me that having inherited a temper from someone who did not and as far as I can tell will never have any control over his temper why was it that I, the child, was expected to be the one to take the high road and learn to control my temper?
It also confuses me that people who do often lose their temper are equally often equipped with the infuriating knowledge of how to push other people’s buttons in an effort to cause them to get angry with the sole purpose of causing an argument that you will later be blamed for because you failed to take the high road! But I’m getting off topic here, I guess what I am saying is that with all the equality and political correctness why is it that people are still being held to different standards? The original essay in which I had to explore the negative results of female anger was in reference to Jo’s temper in little women, a trait she shared with her mother and both were encouraged to grow out of by her father.
I guess what I’m saying is that everyone gets angry sometimes, some people more easily than others. I am very grateful that I learnt to control my temper but not so much that my situation forced me to learn the hard way. I would just like it if everyone was held accountable to their own behaviour. I know that the world is not equal and that it will probably never happen but if everyone just made a small effort to at least try to learn restraint how much better would the world be?
Oh, at this point I guess I should mention that the whole reason I began thinking of this at all was because of the aforementioned sulk. Except sulk may not be the right term for it... I guess the easiest way to describe my behaviour was to compare it to that of a tired, ill toddler who just doesn’t know what to do because of feeling so ill and having no comprehension of how to feel better or why mummy and daddy can’t just provide a magical fix. For the first time in quite a while I understood the sick toddler tantrum for what it really was: a plea for the pain to go away. I also got to enjoy not being the person dealing with said tantrum for a change, having dealt with more than my fair share in nurseries, crèches, babysitting and as an Au Pair. The only problem was the tantrum itself didn’t actually provide any relief; it just caused more irritation and eventually introspection. The thing that did finally help was a nice hot bath, clean pyjamas, clean sheets and sleep (although seeing the end of The Incredibles would have been nice!).
So there it is, no comical accidents (well since you read this far I guess I could mention the 100+ splinters I had to remove from my knuckles having scraped them down the fence while covering Rory, walking into a sofa while watching a spider abseiling from the arm of my glasses and feeling an urgent need to sterilize my clothes after attempting to stand up from the bottom drawer of the freezer and ending up on the kitchen floor or a shared house which flatmates who have a questionable grasp on hygiene!) just a general anger management rant...
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