Therapy today was… amazing. So many things revealing, so many new avenues of understanding revealed, so much good, solid therapeutic ground covered.

These are the days that justify all the sessions where nothing of note happens. I won’t claim I had some kind of life altering breakthrough and now everything will be different now, because that would be setting myself up for failure.

But we did good work. Such good work that it is four hours later and I am still processing it all.

One thing we figured out is why I can be calm, rational, and strategic when some offends against me, but when it’s someone I know and care about (me and mine, I like to say). I fucking lose my mind.

What we figured out is that I have a massive amount of latent anger from all that I have suffered in life. All the neglect and abuse and powerlessness and helplessness that I couldn’t even acknowledge as wrong because it was against my programming is still in there, ready to explode.

But I grew up without a model of how to express anger in a healthy way. My father expressed it a lot, but purely out of his need to vent his anger on us helpless victims. My mother rarely expressed it at all. Us kids didn’t do much better.

So in my world, there was only two possibilities : expressing anger at whoever can’t fight back, or never express it at all.

As you know, I swore to myself that I would never take my anger out on others like my father did. Which meant that for a long time, I couldn’t speak up for myself. But all that anger was still there, waiting for release.

Put someone else into the equation, though, and suddenly a very strong protective urge opens the anger valves and then I lose my motherfucking mind. I am ready to kill crush and destroy in order to protect my loved ones, and to a lesser but still very potent extend anyone who I see as being a victim of a bully and/or injustice.

Which brings me to a scenario that worries me.

My therapist has asked me what I would do if I had a real asshole for a professor. No problem, I replied. I can be calm and strategic. I can smile in the guy’s face and take the abuse if it gets me closer to what I want, namely a good grade.

I might also be plotting their downfall. But mostly the other thing.

But what has me worried is what would happen if this professor was an asshole to everyone, not just me. And there I was, sitting there while he abused people far, far less able to defend themselves than me. Making them cry, even.

There is no fucking way I would be able to let that slide. None.

Like I have said before in this space, I simply cannot sit by when bad shit is going down. I simply have to throw myself into the middle and protect the innocent from the badness. I have to thrust myself betwixt the weak and the strong, and betwixt fragile humanity and the cruel and unfeeling hand of fat.

I have to do something. The alternative is practically unthinkable to me. I GOTTA DO SOMETHING.

Which could very well put me in conflict with an asshole professor. If I saw someone verbally abusing some hapless nineteen year old freshman and making them break down in tears, there is no way I could just sit idly by and let it happen. I would draw that professor’s attention to myself and let them try that shit on me, and see how far that gets them.

It would be my mission to destroy them. But odds are, they would have real power over me, and might even be able to get me expelled. And I don’t see any real solution to that.

Granted, I am perfectly capable of calling their bluff if they threaten me with consequences they can’t actually follow through on. And I am also perfectly capable of learning everything there is to know about what they (and/or their colleague/cronies can and can not do) and nailing them to the wall if they make a single mistake.

But the real political power structure in any organization is based on things like favors owed, influence, and power of personality, and it might be that whatever the rules say, they can squash me like a bug and there would be nothing I could do about it. And then I would be SSOL.

So here is hoping that doesn’t happen. And if it does happen, let’s hope I can retain the wit to be a sniper and not a juggernaut, and gather all the information, support, and arguments I need before taking my one clean perfect shot to take this person out for good.

Because seriously. I am here to destroy them.

Of course, it could very well be that today’s professors are very well behaved because, and this is just a guess on my part, when they look at their students they see a sea of devices recording their every move. The last thing any professor wants is for a video of them being a total tool to some teary eyed freshman to become a viral outrage hit the next day on YouTube.

I hope that’s true. I really don’t know how I feel about recording the lecture. It seems eminently sensible, and yet I don’t feel good about it. It seems rude and disrespectful.

Especially if you fall asleep.

So I have worked out a compromise : I will do without until I really feel the need or desire for it.

After all, I never recorded anything the last time I was in college, and I did fine.

Hmmm. I guess this turned out to be about a lot more than therapy.

I never end up where I was planning to go.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.