All Cried Out

I hate confrontations. But I rush headlong into them anyway because if it doesn't get resolved immediately, it'll eat me up. I can always justify my actions because I am good with words, but my body language and my wild wild hair speak a different story. I hate confrontations because I am short tempered and prone to quick flare-ups. I can get real "cheap", use every bit of ammunition I can find to fight my war, and that is ALWAYS my greatest downfall. The upside is that I am as quick to forgive and accept apologies - but by then it's too much said too soon, and too late to repair the damage.

Quite recently, three strangers (two profs and a friend's friend) described me in their own (sweet?) way - rebellious (and negative), intimidating, and aggressive. None of them knew me all that well, which got me wondering "how am I projecting myself to the rest of the world"? I have noticed a very obvious change in my personality over the past two years - there is a lot of anger and resentment in me. Not towards any person in specific but towards mankind as a whole. I go out in search of arguments and fights. I say the meanest things that hurt the people I love most. I hate the maniac I am slowly becoming. I don't what the root cause of this anger is but I'd give anything to find out. It could even be PMS or work-related stress, I really don't know! The last thing I want is to be melodramatic about the things that suck in my life - I don't want to be this sad princess who needs rescuing. I don't need rescuing.

My better half often asks me why we can't discuss anything serious without me eventually bursting into tears. Tears are not a woman's weapon - it is her downfall. Once you get into that trap of crying just so he'll hear you out, you're doomed. Men don't listen - and have been programmed to respond to tears. Women cry as a last resort because every other option of trying to communicate as a "reasonable person" goes flying out the window when men get that glazed look in their eyes. Then it's just intense fury that sets in because you may want strangle him but you know he'll swat you away like a fly with a flick of his wrist. They choose public places to drive you up the wall - leaving you with the option of screaming like a shrew or walk away with some dignity intact. The bottling up of this frustration is what leads to the opening of the floodgates. It's not the same sweet n salty tears that one sheds when they're sad. It has all the bitterness of anger, frustration, irritation and humiliation in it - taste and see. We cry because that's the only time people really open their eyes and notice we have a problem.

I hate confrontation because it might make me cry and THAT I hate more than anything else. Of course it'll only happen with those I genuinely care about - the rest of the world be damned, but that's what makes it all the more difficult to deal with. I cry, I worry, I obsess, I run to find a dictionary cos I'm not sure how to SPELL 'obsess'! Most of all, I am scared to lose the one person in my life - I am scared he will find my violence too much of a burden to bear in the long run. He has put up with so much from me, so much more than love and duty requires him to. As is usual with most men, the vacant expression on his face that shows almost no emotion only makes me imagine the worst for our future.

I would have left me long ago...what is he waiting for?