It has occurred to me that I might not be as cool-headed and restrained as I have always thought myself to me.

In fact, I might be kind of a hothead.

I hope not, I really do. But in light of my recent incidents with arguing with teachers and getting into it with that asshole on the Skytrain, I have to at least consider the possibility that I have a quick temper given certain stimuli, and I will have to try to watch out for that in the future if I don’t want to end up shooting myself in the foot on a regular basis.

I’ve always known I have a quick mouth. Trying to restrain that is probably part of what made me start overthinking what I say in the first place. I learned at a fairly early age that I could not just say whatever popped into my head and I certainly could not let my thoughts flow out of my mouth like some people seem to do. If I had done that, I would not have survived long enough to attend school. I have always felt the need to carefully choose which of the many possible words that could be coming out of my mouth I would actually go with.

So a quick temper makes sense from that point of view. After all, a quick mind powers that quick mouth and emotions start in the mind.

Plus I know that I have enough suppressed anger that it fill the Grand Canyon up to the brim. A lot of bad shit has happened to me in my life, and I was too scared, timid, or weak to deal with it even by getting angry, plus there is the anger generated by all that latent pain. And like I have said many times before in this space, I have trouble expressing anger because of my Dad and his out of control temper. Because of him, I vowed that I would never take my bad mood out on others.

But I went too far in the other direction.

So yeah. Lots of pent up rage that has been brewing inside me for ages. It could be that my recent outbreaks of temper have been symptoms of my finally having progressed far enough through the recovery process to release some of that impotent rage. It’s something that I know has to happen before I can be healthy, but I have been reluctant to do it. Perhaps, in the name of recovery, that choice is being taken away from me for my own good.

That’s all well and good – but in the meantime, I have a life to lead and people I really don’t want to hurt or piss off, for reasons both ethical and professional.

If that’s the case, then at least there will be an end to the process. My suppressed rage might seem infinite sometimes, but it ain’t. Eventually, I would run out, and probably be a heck of a lot happier as a result. Makes me wish I could press a button and release it all at once. Spend a few months as a raging psycho in a mental ward.

That could actually be a funny scene. A big scary looking dude like me in the max security wing of a psychiatric facility screaming in a rubber room somewhere, spewing incoherent profanities, threatening everyone around me at the top of my voice… then suddenly stopping. Brief pause, then a polite knocking on my cell door.

“Um, excuse me? I’m done now, and I’d like to get out. ”

Anyhow, the other main possibility is that I have had this quick temper all my life, but I never knew it because it was buried under fear, depression, and eagerness to please. That would mean it’s the sort of thing I am just plain going to have to learn to live with, which seems like a huge amount of work and hassle.

But hey, the potential reward is sanity, so it’s all worth it. I guess.

Part of my recovery is to remind myself that life with real emotions, as opposed to the artificial calm of depression, is going to be a lot more messy and complicated. As a Taurus, I instinctively eschew complications, chaos, and confounding variables, and on that level, I find the inner regime of enforced tranquility soothing.

There’s a reason why a lot of the most destructive and horrible fascist leaders have been Tauruses. We’re prime candidates for favoring order above all else.

But that’s not real life. Real life is organic, complex, and interconnected. Even the most austere of regimes is nothing but a playground for cranky children who are so determined to hang on to their childhood innocence that they will destroy everything in the world that is too complicated for them to deal with.

And i want to live, dammit. Depression turned me into one of the undead, numb and cold, locked away in my ice palace and freezing to death. So emotionally suppressed that I could not even express my deep inner pain to the world in any form. Instead, I acted like nothing was wrong. And the sad part was, I even believed it.

And all that time, I was rotting away inside.

So now I want to live. To be part of the great big chaotic scary wonderful world, and partake of its warmth, that I might blossom at last.

That means learning to adapt to adapt to a life where the variables slowly increase in number and complexity, and I will have to, again and again, face the cold black wall of my absence of faith as I exceed the number of variables that can be known, calculated, controlled, predicted, and “handled”.

Once that happens, faith is the only thing that can save you. Faith, and trust. Faith that things will be okay even if you don’t know they will. Trust that the world is more than a cold and hostile hellscape. It’s also whatever else you want to make it into. But first you have to invest.

And that means risking loss.

And I know that’s not easy.

Of course, the REAL real answer might be that the summer heat is making me cranky.

But where’s the fun in that?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.