Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2001-07-12 02:56 am
azurelunatic) wrote2001-07-12 02:56 am
Cycles of disintegration
It deserves a post of its own. Here's the comment I put in a random journal I found -- that would be Matthew, when he said: i do not understand why people continue to imitate behaviour in others that has caused them pain in the past. can we not see that the things which cause us pain will cause another pain? what will it take to break this cycle? it is the cycle better known as "becoming our parents." every parent in the world has at some point said "i am becoming my mother" or "i am becoming my father."
and then I said:
It can improve in every generation, though.
My grandfather had a fearsome temper. My father had a merely terrible temper. I cried myself to sleep in my teenage years sometimes, and swore I would never have children, because I recognized in myself the temper that was my father's.
One day, when I was perhaps sixteen or seventeen, my father saw us children having a disagreement over something, and, as was usual, he flew into a rage and was about to destroy the perceived cause of the squabble.
My sister ran and hid, though our father never touched us when he was angry. But I stood my ground.
For the first time in my life, I was angry enough at my father to stand up to him and say in my strongest voice, "Do not do that. Though we are fighting, you have no right to destroy my cookie dough."
He was taken aback. I kept talking, and managed to talk him down from his rage, talk him out of destruction. He sulked off and found a corner somewhere and worked on something quietly, much ashamed of himself.
I think that was the first time since he stopped bottling his temper up and letting it eat away at him that someone had the nerve to stand up to him and say, "No."
He's been angry, since, but never again has he gone into one of those rages, now that it's been proved to him that he can stop, and if he will not stop, then I will stop him.
I've since learned how to banish my own anger -- not let it bottle up inside me, but collect it and purify it and reabsorb it or release the energy in some more creative way. Last time I was truly furious, I believe there was some intensive and utterly astonishing housecleaning done.
and then I said:
It can improve in every generation, though.
My grandfather had a fearsome temper. My father had a merely terrible temper. I cried myself to sleep in my teenage years sometimes, and swore I would never have children, because I recognized in myself the temper that was my father's.
One day, when I was perhaps sixteen or seventeen, my father saw us children having a disagreement over something, and, as was usual, he flew into a rage and was about to destroy the perceived cause of the squabble.
My sister ran and hid, though our father never touched us when he was angry. But I stood my ground.
For the first time in my life, I was angry enough at my father to stand up to him and say in my strongest voice, "Do not do that. Though we are fighting, you have no right to destroy my cookie dough."
He was taken aback. I kept talking, and managed to talk him down from his rage, talk him out of destruction. He sulked off and found a corner somewhere and worked on something quietly, much ashamed of himself.
I think that was the first time since he stopped bottling his temper up and letting it eat away at him that someone had the nerve to stand up to him and say, "No."
He's been angry, since, but never again has he gone into one of those rages, now that it's been proved to him that he can stop, and if he will not stop, then I will stop him.
I've since learned how to banish my own anger -- not let it bottle up inside me, but collect it and purify it and reabsorb it or release the energy in some more creative way. Last time I was truly furious, I believe there was some intensive and utterly astonishing housecleaning done.