“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” ~ From the play “The Mourning Bride” by William Congreve
The past few days have found me consumed in anger. The quote above seemed to suit, although in all honesty, “a woman scorned” is not entirely accurate. I would have to say it’s more along the lines of “a woman misunderstood.” But I like the quote, and wanted to use it to make a point. (As an aside, I thought that it was a quote from William Shakespeare, so I am glad that I looked it up before writing this piece!)
Our stories are just that…Our stories, and for the most part we tend to get caught up in them, and really, who cares? So I won’t go into the story behind my wrath here. Suffice it to say that I got very angry at someone’s actions based on a misunderstanding of an explanation of my feelings.
As my ire grew, and I kept thinking of more things that I felt misunderstood about, it began to occur to me that I was not just angry about this one “misunderstanding.” I realized that events of the past week were buried in my fierce and hot anger, and I took it out on one person. Now let me say that some of my anger was justified; I felt wronged and wanted to set the record straight instead of keeping my feelings buried inside where they would come up later to cause real problems. Which leads me directly to my point:
The feelings that I had kept buried from previous “events” did indeed come up to be dealt with, and they showed up at the same time as the whole “misunderstanding” issue came about.
So instead of being a little mad, I was furious. And I stayed furious for a few days. That’s neither a good nor a healthy feeling.
I live, I learn, and I pray that I can “get” my lessons well enough so that I don’t keep repeating the same things over and over. My reasons for sharing this are so that 1. I can potentially offer help to someone who has felt the way that I do, and 2. It makes me feel better. Better about myself, and my apparent lack of emotional control at times.
I am no longer in the throes of fury. I still get tweaked by the whole deal, but hey, I’m human. Moving through our emotions is a very healthy thing; it is only unhealthy if we keep them buried so deep that when something does trigger us enough, we let it all out in one fell swoop. That can be damaging to others, relationships, and yourself. I understand this first hand, as I feel that I probably have burned a bridge in this case. I hope not, but “such is life.” (“Such is life,” from “Being Certain Extracts From The Diary of Tom Collins” by Joseph Furphy.)
