mad in the blood

My therapist likes making me beat pretty pink pillows with a foam-covered plastic bat. She likes me to yell angry things while I do so. Tonight's subject was my step-father who took a brutal invisible beating while I screamed some pretty awful things.
He and my mother are in town this week and it's making me ill.
There is this big, burning ball of anger inside of me that I do not like. We are not friends, this burning ball and I, which is why I rarely let it have air -- the moment I let it out, it will feed on the oxygen and the freedom and swallow many, many people in it's wake. People that may or may not deserve to be hit in the face with this ugly, fierce thing that they had no idea was bubbling inside of me.
One of the pitfalls to pushing it down, down, down is that it needs something to feed on - otherwise it'd just fizzle out, right? Pair this anger with an over-analytical mind and it becomes a breeding ground for self-hatred. It's been around so long, if I liked it, I would've given it a name by now. My only constant and my worst enemy, my angry nameless ball, feeding on all of the ins and outs that I come across by picking apart every aspect of my (honestly, in this day and age) rather average, mediocre, boring life. Addiction and co-dependency and depression runs in the family - what's new, right? Oh, but the ball, the ball loves this. The ball is hungry and it needs anything it can get it's fiery little hands on, and like me, it's a fighter.
Blame this flaw on this, explain that by pointing the finger at that piece of my childhood. It all makes sense, but I can't FEEL it.

This is the reason I started going to therapy. The ball and the over-analytical brain. My brain, that can find loopholes in anything that isn't pretty... but can't. feel. anything. positive. coming. from. the. reasons. I know that I have co-dependent tendencies. I know that I'm mentally self-destructive. I know, I know, I know, I have concluded all of these things, but I can't use them. All I know is that they feel awful, they've been there for a very long time, and I can't exorcise them because -- this includes the ball -- they are a part of me. They are mine, they are me.

So I beat at pretty pink pillows with foam-covered plastic bats, praying to a God With No Name for an epiphany, for an exorcism, for relief, but until then it's... "It runs in the family?"

This song explains... way too much of me:



Now I'm off to put on a happy face and have a vegan dinner with hyper-literate Bay Areans... but all I want to do is take a long bath...