Angry

I was talking to a friend last night, and she said that I seemed angry. This was... well, it bothers me, because I thought I was calm.

In my ongoing quest to become more in touch with my emotions and feelings, I've decided to explore this anger.

Let me tell you the situation that aroused my emotions:

A couple of weeks ago I went to a Unitarian Universealist Church service. Before the Sunday services, they hold a Religious Education class, one for kids and one for adults. In the adult RE class, there was a woman who was telling a story about a show she saw on HBO. "Be Like Others" is a documentary about transexuals in Iran.

Now, maybe in Iran they call all people who dress in the 'wrong' gender's clothes 'transexual'. I don't know, and I haven't seen the documentary. The point of conflict seems to have arisen when I told the woman that in the US, the term 'transexual' is used differently than she (and that HBO documentary) was using it.

So, anyway, she later told my friend that I was too confrontational and that I'd hurt her feelings.

On the one hand, I didn't mean to hurt her feelings, and I'm sorry that I did. On the other hand, I'm freaking pissed that this woman, in a position of responsibility within the church, would talk about me instead of to me. I don't know who else she's been talking to about her negative impression of me, or how those people might react to her gossip.

I want to use the church to find a community of people that are at least superficially like me; if I make enemies, I'd rather it be through my actions than through the words of another person. It's like an echo of my college club days.

I'm angry about this, and I don't know exactly what to do about it, or how to stop feeling angry.

I don't want people to judge me by anything other than who and what I am. I want to feel like I am seen, all of me, appreciated and accepted. I do not want to wear a mask, hide myself, pretend to be anything other than me.

I've done that. I've hidden myself, pretended to be happy and ok. I pretended and pretended to be happy and it didn't help or change anything.

I've spent my life avoiding what I feel, avoiding expressing it fully, avoided looking at anything other than the bland dull pleasant facade I built around myself. And I'm so over that.

This feels very much like what I remember being a teenager felt like. It feels like I'm slightly differently shaped than my body is... I don't fit inside this skin, inside this life. I want change so badly right now.. my wanderlust has woken up and my need to radically alter everything is screaming at me. Break it, tear it down, build something new and interesting from the wreckage.

I think I want people to see me so I can see me. When what they see is something negative I wonder if it's true, if I really am so negative and bleak.

I know I'm angry, and it's leaking into other parts of my life. I'm angry. I want to be at peace, but the only peace I feel intimately familiar with is the peace of unfeeling emptiness and soul death. I don't know how to be peaceful and emotional at the same time.

Oh, and I read a story online about a woman who was raped when she was 15 and repressed the memory. Twenty years later, she has a diagnosis of PTSD. I read the symptoms of PTSD, because the story had a lot of elements that were very familiar to me. I'm a bit concerned, and will be bothering my therapist about this next week.