Decisions Decisions.

Decisions decisions. I'm not sure if saying it twice helps...I doubt it. I've opined before that one of the key difficulties that any sort of major life upheaval/trauma throws up beyond the immediate issue(s) is the affect it has on a persons decision making capabilities. When you are pushed into a corner (or feel that you are) everything intensifies...like a slow (ish) release fight or flight response that leaves you at times a bit caught between those two options. That's what it feels like anyway and one of the consequences is an increased tendency to find even quite small decisions problematic. Much in the same way I suppose that small, fairly insignificant things can become huge almost life and death issues. I remember some time back practically tearing the house apart looking for a particular hoody that I'd mislaid as if it was the holy grail itself...I was vaguely aware of how ridiculous my increasing state of anxiety over the whereabouts of this particular garment was (at least in the part of my brain that was still functioning rationally) but it did not lessen the rising panic over something that was really not that important. I had other hoodies. But I needed to find that one and I wasn't quitting till I did. Of course it had nothing to do with clothing...I knew that through the fog of irrational concern that was around me at the time. It's like when I (still) get really angry with the remote control of the TV and begin to converse with it as you would a mortal enemy...or the lawnmower cable when it keeps catching on that annoying rocky outcrop at the side of the house and breaks the connection (I actually shouted an expletive at it the other night and that I'm certain was audible to next doors occupant, while in my imagination  I visited all manner of horrors on the idiot who had put the rockery in such a stupid place). The rage generated has little or nothing to do with immediate events. It was the fact that the TV is in a house I don't really want to be in...as with the grass etc...my grass is somewhere else and I'd still be cutting it if life wasn't such a bitch and things had been different etc etc...and on it goes till you are in a frenzy of self-recrimination over allowing yourself to once again be dragged down that cul de sac of anger and rage. Then you are even angrier at being angry. And it's "her" fault (you can substitute what or who you want) for putting me in this situation where I'm cutting someone else's grass and watching TV in someone else's house. Let me repeat...THIS IS NOT ABOUT GRASS.  I don't care about grass one way or the other...in fact as a chronic hayfever sufferer I would happily live in a grass free world altogether. You get my drift. The problem is not grass or TVs or rockery placement...it is anger. The sort of anger that burns and broods and writhes, clawing at your innards till it bursts forth in a torrent and goes for the jugular of whoever or whatever is in the vicinity at that moment. It is a relentless, indiscriminate & unstoppable force that on the inside eats like acid and on the outside spews the debris in all directions. It is often followed by a feeling of guilt and an emptiness bordering on desolation...it is never sated...no matter how frequent or forceful its expression. For some it is a struggle with it in general terms...for others it's related to specific events and people. I'm in the latter camp. Of course you often start in the latter camp and cross over to the former. Such is the insidious nature of the beast. Counselling and "anger management" may of course mitigate it or even allow a certain amount of controlled release but in my limited experience it often only papers over the cracks. Anger runs deep and it runs long. It's resilience is hard to break down. I know this every time I cut the grass...or swear at the TV remote.  One small plus is that my own acquaintance with intense anger has made me a bit more sympathetic to angry people in general...well I hope it has anyway. Anger comes from pain. And some people are in a lot of pain. Even the annoying ones. But what about those decisions? I had not actually intended this to be about anger but as if to prove a point it's ended up pushing its way centre stage. Perhaps that merely indicates how close to the surface mine is. And to a degree how all-pervasive it is. The ability to make decisions is as much undermined by it as by other factors......anxiety, insecurity, instability ...all these things bleed uncomfortably into each other.  A very close friend recently said to me that it is generally better to do something than to do nothing. The context can affect that obviously but in my case they are right. I've more or less decided to move out of the rented accommodation I've been in for nearly four years and go back to live with my father. I moved out originally as I needed my own space ....that has not really changed but I can no longer realistically afford to stay there. Taking such a decision may not seem a big deal...I was told as much yesterday by a well meaning acquaintance...and in the grand cycle of the universe it's not. But it is to me. It's yet another choice I'm making that I don't want to make. As was the choice to live here in the first place. As was the "choice" to leave the marital home in the first place and go back to the house I grew up in. I wanted none of it. And for that reason anything associated with it is always, in its own way, going to be a big deal. And it will always be tainted in some way by that anger that won't go away, however much it may abate in intensity. 

Such is life.