Is “mattress” really just the female version of “mattress”?

Had therapy today, and my therapist had an unusual but quite sound suggestion : that I prop an old mattress up against a wall and beat the ever loving shit out of it.

The idea is that it would be a great way for me to both get exercise and work out my latent aggression at the same time.

It makes perfect sense to me. I have always wanted a punching bag or heavy bag to use for that very purpose.  But those are both extremely expensive and totally incompatible with the size of our apartment.

But a single mattress, sans frame or bedding, would fit in my room. In fact, the best place for it would be a space not three feet from where I am sitting right now.

And I have to admit, being able to stand up from the computer and vent my rage at will sounds pretty frigging sweet.

The topic came up because I was talking about hwo I think a lot of my problems come from pent up emotions and unexpressed anger. As patient readers know, I have an enormous amount of anger and frustration built up inside me because anger is the emotion I have the most trouble expressing.

And I told him the story of why. I have told it here before but I will tell it again because it really does explain a lot.

The incident in question happened when I was in high school. In computer class. Which in that semester was taught by none other than Mister Yeo (pronounced yo).

Yes, that’s a very funny name. Moving on.

Now he and I did not get along at all. I had discovered this n the previous year when he had been my geometry teacher. I swear it was mostly some weird kind of pheromone thing. When he and I were in the same room we set one another’s teeth on edge. This despite us both trying really hard to get along.

Him more than me, because I was 17 at the time and less aware of things. But  definitely tried hard. I think we were both bewildered by the whole phenomenon and wanted to regain some kind of control over ourselves despite the fucked up messages our primitive brains were sending us.

That’s what we intellectuals do. We have to prove to ourselves that we can resist purely hormonal bullshit and remain masters of our own actions.

In practice, that only goes so far, and we have to shamefully admit that we get overwhelmed by hormones and pheromones sometimes too.

Personally, I’d rather admit to a bizarre and outre fetish or a  love of Justin Beiber than admit that I had lost control like that.

Anyhow, we didn’t get along. Luckily, we both knew it going into computer class, so we dealt with it in the classic male way by simply ignoring one another.

I suppose it helped that I knew so very much more about computers than him, and he knew it. So that kept him in his corner, and I had no desire to tangle with or hurt him, so that kept me in mine.

But then there was that fateful day at the end of the semester when he deleted all the student files off the hard drive of the one computer in the computer that HAD a hard drive (that’s how long ago this was, folks), exactly as he’d been saying he would all semester, but I hadn’t listened, and so I had not backed up my work to my school-assigned floppy disk like I was supposed to do.

So let me be clear. I was in the wrong here,.

Nevertheless, this action pissed me the fuck off. I guess on some level, I didn’t think he would actually do it. So when I found out he had done it, a fuse was lit in me and it did not take long before it went off.

I forgot what I said in my high intensity tirade But I remember putting absolutely every ounce of my being into telling him to go FUCK himself.

And then I went home, because honestly, how can you top that?

I come to school the next day, and I find out that directly after I did that, he had a heart attack. He survived but it was pretty bad. He never returned to being a teacher, as far as I know. He was too physically weak.

And I feel really bad about that now. Looking back, he was a pretty harmless kind of guy. Maybe a bit of a dick sometimes, but he certainly didn’t deserve such a crushing blow. I would take it all back if I could.

But you can see how that make me reluctant to let my anger call the shots ever again, can’t you? I nearly killed the guy. That’s the kind of damage I can do.

And yes, I know all the counterarguments. Like, maybe he would have had that heart attack that day no matter what happened. And of course, he had to have a bad heart in the first place.

And those are all sane, rational, and credible arguments. And no doubt they represent the objective truth.

But I know in my heart that it was me. My rage, with all my considerable emotive power behind it, magnified by my size.

The poor man probably feared for his life. I had my full adult height of 6′ 1″ at the time, and I weighed around 230-250 pounds. He was fairly small, like 5′ 6″. Plus, this was completely out of character for me. So it was extremely shocking. as well.

So there ya have it. The reason I keep my anger on a very short chain. I damn near killed a man with it. Someone who did not deserve it at all.

I am slowly coming into my power now, though. Less scared of myself. So who knows, knowing that I have this kind of power might come in handy in the future.

But would I be willing to bully my way to the top?

I am going to have to say “maybe” to that.

It’s something I will have to think over.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.