Things are beginning to get to me.

Slowly, I am losing the ability to control my defences, my marvelous adept defences, the ones that have seen me through life and would have hastened my death. It wasn't a conscious decision, it wasn't something I asked for or wanted, it just happened. I realized it the other day when I was as miserable as ham on toast and just couldn't find a way to stop being miserable.

I used to have a vicious and violent temper-it was rare that I would explode but put me on a slow boil long enough and the explosion would indeed come. It was also a pattern I witnessed as a kid-anger took the form of airborne products. Telephones, lamps, things within reaching distance learnt how it felt to fly. I followed that path as an adult and while I never hurt anyone physically or directed anything at them, I was like a warm can of Coke that took a tumble in a vending machine-tap me too hard and I exploded all over the bearer of bad coins. It wasn't Hell Hath No Fury Like a Helen Scorned, it was simply Hell Hath No Fury Like Helen. When I lost it I lost it well and good-dishes would fly, glasses would break, items would lose their sense of gravity.

Yes, I know it was unproductive.

It didn't mean I could stop it.

Weirdly, my anger dried up and disappeared a few years ago. After a spectacular plate-smashing session during a bust-up with my ex, I tempered my anger. It dried up, a hollow hole where the well used to be. There was nothing in there. I simply wasn't angry.

Even when I should've been.

Talking with my therapist on Monday taught me more than I have learnt in a single session so far. Throughout my life anger has been a weapon, one used both against me and by me. Anger was a means of lobbing fireballs at someone, of spreading the pain. Anger was a form of manipulation against me, it was a way to make me twist and squirm, it was something I couldn't escape from, and in not escaping, learnt how to mis-use it myself.

Until now.

I just don't really get angry anymore.

My man, he thinks it's an excellent form of repressing. Sitting across from him he tells me things I have never heard before and, in hearing them, they make sense. Anger is not a tool to get someone. Anger should not be a method of torture. Anger shouldn't be something that rips your heart out, throws it across the room and watches it hit the wall and slide down, leaving a bloody trail behind. Anger should happen when someone crosses a boundary. You let them know they've crossed it, and if they don't get it then anger is the resulting reaction. Anger is not about flying items. It's not about destruction and punishment. Anger is not something that should rip a person in half, a pustulent split down the middle. Anger's a protection mechanism, something that protects us when we feel infringed upon.

Is this how life is supposed to be?

I ask him. He confirms that when he feels a boundary has been crossed, he tells the person. If they do not listen, then he may shout. Once they listen and stop treading on his toes his anger dissipates.

Is that normal?

And he tells me further that this is how the majority of people work. There are some people that work on extremes, that they have such tight boundaries that they spend their time paranoid, defending themselves against intruders, real or imagined. On the other side of the spectrum are people that have no boundaries, that get tread on again and again and are laid to waste as they don't fight back.

"And that," he says, "is where you are, Helen."

I am startled. "What do you mean? I have boundaries."

"Do you? When's the last time you were angry?" he replied.

I think about it. I can't recall the last time I was actually angry at someone. But I have been cracking, and trickles of fury come out. That morning I was running late for the train, and the station masters were being dicks about ticket checking. The queue was 20 people deep, the train arrived in two minutes, and so I went to the ticket machine. The machine, it turns out, would go all the way through the process of selling me a ticket up until the money exchange, wherein it turned out it wouldn't accept notes.

Already someone who stresses badly about trains, I went mental. I went into a white-hot blind fury and, without realizing it, started kicking the machine and screaming at it. I didn't plan on doing so, I had no idea what made me do it, but I truly assaulted Network Rail's machine.

When I got on the train I realized my foot was wet. Looking down I saw I was bleeding all over my flats and the carpets-in kicking the machine I had ripped off half of my big toenail and I hadn't even felt it. Throughout my train ride into London, I stare at my toe and wonder what the hell is going on with me. I buy bandages at Waterloo, where I wipe up the blood and tape up the toe in the Ladies Room, strange looks and pointed fingers from others around me.

I show him my toe and tell him this. I tell him I don't understand what happened. I tell him I haven't flipped like that in years.

"I think your defense mechanism is slowly starting to slip. When's the last time you stepped out of yourself?" he asks.

"Yesterday," I reply. "I walked right out of me yesterday." I remember it, too. I was feeling incredibly stressed about Melissa's birthday event. I was tired. I had a headache. I had been feeling like I was under a cloud and just couldn't get out of it. A run-in with Angus and a nasty comment he'd made was enough to seperate me, the real me eating popcorn in the doorway, the other me going about my routines like a robot.

"Why did you do that?" he asked. I explain it to him. "And you don't think you should've gotten angry?" he asks, his eyebrows raised.

My life moves by me like the view from a train window. "No, there's nothing to get angry about."

"What should you have done?" he prods.

"Nothing, there was nothing to do. I handled it fine."

"Stepping outside of yourself is a defense mechanism to take you away from the situation."

"I know, but it would've just turned bad should I have said something," I reply. Confrontation is bad. Very bad.

"A boundary was crossed, Helen," he says leaning forward. "Should you have said anything?"

"No! Anything I could have said would've caused problems." I state. I feel something slipping inside of me.

"But if you could have said something with impunity, what would it have been?" he asks, very gently.

The white hot heat hit me, much like it had at the train station. "YOU MISERABLE FUCKING BASTARD, DON'T YOU EVER SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT AGAIN, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?" I scream.

I clap a hand over my mouth, shocked. "I'm so sorry. I would never have actually used words like that. And I wasn't yelling at you," I say quietly.

"I know," he smiles. "You have been repressing too much. It wouldn't have come out that way, but you can't keep bottling it up inside. Anger sometimes has consequences, but you have to figure out if getting some of your boundaries back means accepting that there may be consequences. You have to get your boundaries back and, while it may be tough, ultimately people may respect you for standing up for yourself. You have to try to stay anchored in the real and address when someone has crossed a line. It's not easy and it's not going to happen tomorrow, but we can work on this."

Angus and I talk this over later, and he agrees to work with me on it, too.

Much later I think about Gorby. A trembling, scared puppy when he arrived, we have worked hard with him. One of the things I've done is to run at him with my arms in the air. The first few times I did this he cowered, until once I reached him I pet him and scratched his stomach and played with him. He now knows that when I run at him with my hands up it's a good thing. Gorby is no longer afraid of hands being raised at him, it sets his tail wagging and his tongue lolling. Through work he's learnt that anger comes in stern words, not in flying fists.

And with a broken toenail and an understanding of what anger should be, I feel I am in the same boat.

-H.

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