I am always surprised at how powerful and awful I feel when I get angry.
On New Year's Eve, Mike got a phone call from a woman who had found my backpack that was stolen out of my car. I was so excited to be getting back some of my things. We arranged for me to pick it up today because of the holiday and I had spent the last couple of days wondering what I would get back and about this kind woman who had called.
She was wonderful. She had opened things up just enough to let them dry a bit even though it smelled foul. She was really concerned about the people who had done this who were driving down her dead-end road, and she generally exuded an air of a good woman trying to help. She wouldn't even take a reward, though I'm glad Mike recommended that I bring flowers. She liked the flowers. She even hugged me and that made me cry.
Then, thankfully, my sister called just as I got into my car to go home, so I talked to her the whole way and tried to ignore the smell that emanated from the backpack. My sister helped too, by listening to me. And then there was Nick, who totally understood my anger, being the small warrior that he is. When he got home, Mike listened to me and made me cry again when he said that I should get a new backpack if this was too difficult to manage. I'm trying to really take a moment here and think about the good people in this picture.
You see, my backpack, though intact, smelled like vomit and was filled with the broken glass from my car window. When I got home from the sweet lady's house, I sat in my living room and tried to watch a movie while I took stock of what I had recovered. I don't even remember the beginning of the movie. What I was looking at in my backpack was that compelling.
I got all of my pictures from my wallet back. They'd stripped the cheap wallet, but the photos from it were all there, even the fortune from the cookie that said 'Happiness isn't perfect until it is shared,' something that I had slid onto the photo of Mike. The picture of my old dog, Indiana, was ruined, but Nick's growing up pictures were going to be okay. My favorite picture of my grandma was just a little damp. There were pictures of Mike and I in a photo booth that I'd forgotten about. I even got back my library card and voter registration. I guess these people didn't want to get caught by the police with my name in my stuff.
Can you see me trying to tell you about what was good in this picture and avoiding the bad? See, they ripped the pages out of my notebook. Most of the pages were wet, yet still legible. I'll be able to piece together most of the ones that were torn. But they were ripped and wadded up.
I have to admit that while I sat there with that pukey smell emanating from the pile on the floor, I started to get mad. I got madder when I had to vacuum up some broken glass that fell out of things that I'd picked up. I was fuming as I ironed the sheets of my notebook and tried to figure out how they went together. The audio book from the library had been fine. Even the paperback book by E.O. Wilson was intact, my bookmark in place. Really? And you just had to rip the pages out of my notebook? Did you need some paper?
Okay, you can see me going off here, can't you? I did. I went off into a train of thought and after a warning, both Nick and Mike were smart enough to let me alone with it. Mike took Nick to karate and then to Jack-in-the-Box for dinner. I cleaned. After I vacuumed the rest of the living room floor, I turned the pukey and empty backpack inside out, dumping the broken glass into the garbage. Then, I put it on the longest cycle my washer had available. I was on a roll. I swept out the garage.
The car was next. I took everything out of it and vacuumed it until there wasn't even a pine needle stuck in the threads of the carpet. I vacuumed down into the crevices. I moved the seats all the way back and vacuumed, then all the way forward and vacuumed some more. I took out all the mats and vacuumed them. Some of the positions I was in were better than yoga moves. Then after that, I steam cleaned the inside of the car.
There is something therapeutic about cleaning when you're angry. The best part is that in my head, I battled with these people who did this to me. I made them pay for everything they did and every other evil thing I suffered at the hands of people like them. There was the creepy guy in the grocery store when I was ten, the girl who stole my credit cards and check book while I was in the hospital, the guy who was high at 8am who sideswiped me on I-90, the Domino's Pizza guy who rear-ended me and tried to say it was my fault, the cruel landlord who I could hear beating his wife and infant child, the boss who harassed me, all of them and more. There are lots of stories here, aren't there? Well, you're not likely to hear them, but maybe I'll change my mind and tell them some day. Maybe. In my imagination, these guys got all their evil back and then some.
The last few words to my imaginative scenario was them saying, 'It'll be our word against yours. We can sue you for doing this to us.'
And my response was going to be , 'Not when you're dead.'
Boy that was a good fantasy. I'm feeling much better now.
Thank you for listening, jb
On New Year's Eve, Mike got a phone call from a woman who had found my backpack that was stolen out of my car. I was so excited to be getting back some of my things. We arranged for me to pick it up today because of the holiday and I had spent the last couple of days wondering what I would get back and about this kind woman who had called.
She was wonderful. She had opened things up just enough to let them dry a bit even though it smelled foul. She was really concerned about the people who had done this who were driving down her dead-end road, and she generally exuded an air of a good woman trying to help. She wouldn't even take a reward, though I'm glad Mike recommended that I bring flowers. She liked the flowers. She even hugged me and that made me cry.
Then, thankfully, my sister called just as I got into my car to go home, so I talked to her the whole way and tried to ignore the smell that emanated from the backpack. My sister helped too, by listening to me. And then there was Nick, who totally understood my anger, being the small warrior that he is. When he got home, Mike listened to me and made me cry again when he said that I should get a new backpack if this was too difficult to manage. I'm trying to really take a moment here and think about the good people in this picture.
You see, my backpack, though intact, smelled like vomit and was filled with the broken glass from my car window. When I got home from the sweet lady's house, I sat in my living room and tried to watch a movie while I took stock of what I had recovered. I don't even remember the beginning of the movie. What I was looking at in my backpack was that compelling.
I got all of my pictures from my wallet back. They'd stripped the cheap wallet, but the photos from it were all there, even the fortune from the cookie that said 'Happiness isn't perfect until it is shared,' something that I had slid onto the photo of Mike. The picture of my old dog, Indiana, was ruined, but Nick's growing up pictures were going to be okay. My favorite picture of my grandma was just a little damp. There were pictures of Mike and I in a photo booth that I'd forgotten about. I even got back my library card and voter registration. I guess these people didn't want to get caught by the police with my name in my stuff.
Can you see me trying to tell you about what was good in this picture and avoiding the bad? See, they ripped the pages out of my notebook. Most of the pages were wet, yet still legible. I'll be able to piece together most of the ones that were torn. But they were ripped and wadded up.
I have to admit that while I sat there with that pukey smell emanating from the pile on the floor, I started to get mad. I got madder when I had to vacuum up some broken glass that fell out of things that I'd picked up. I was fuming as I ironed the sheets of my notebook and tried to figure out how they went together. The audio book from the library had been fine. Even the paperback book by E.O. Wilson was intact, my bookmark in place. Really? And you just had to rip the pages out of my notebook? Did you need some paper?
Okay, you can see me going off here, can't you? I did. I went off into a train of thought and after a warning, both Nick and Mike were smart enough to let me alone with it. Mike took Nick to karate and then to Jack-in-the-Box for dinner. I cleaned. After I vacuumed the rest of the living room floor, I turned the pukey and empty backpack inside out, dumping the broken glass into the garbage. Then, I put it on the longest cycle my washer had available. I was on a roll. I swept out the garage.
The car was next. I took everything out of it and vacuumed it until there wasn't even a pine needle stuck in the threads of the carpet. I vacuumed down into the crevices. I moved the seats all the way back and vacuumed, then all the way forward and vacuumed some more. I took out all the mats and vacuumed them. Some of the positions I was in were better than yoga moves. Then after that, I steam cleaned the inside of the car.
There is something therapeutic about cleaning when you're angry. The best part is that in my head, I battled with these people who did this to me. I made them pay for everything they did and every other evil thing I suffered at the hands of people like them. There was the creepy guy in the grocery store when I was ten, the girl who stole my credit cards and check book while I was in the hospital, the guy who was high at 8am who sideswiped me on I-90, the Domino's Pizza guy who rear-ended me and tried to say it was my fault, the cruel landlord who I could hear beating his wife and infant child, the boss who harassed me, all of them and more. There are lots of stories here, aren't there? Well, you're not likely to hear them, but maybe I'll change my mind and tell them some day. Maybe. In my imagination, these guys got all their evil back and then some.
The last few words to my imaginative scenario was them saying, 'It'll be our word against yours. We can sue you for doing this to us.'
And my response was going to be , 'Not when you're dead.'
Boy that was a good fantasy. I'm feeling much better now.
Thank you for listening, jb
No comments:
Post a Comment