relapse, or, being freakisly good (at being very, very bad)

It's funny the way that anger can feel like a drug.

The sordid truth is that after writing last week's blog post, I relapsed right back into that unfortunate little addiction.

I had been counting weeks but now I am back to counting days. Again. (Before yesterday morning it was in increments of hours, so I suppose there's that.)

It felt like such a coming out, that writing of last Monday night, and I got such wonderfully sweet feedback (thank you Abby, thank you Tracy, thank you Ari and Connie and Katrin) that was in itself a rush.  Evan and I joked that night about how, given past patterns, I had jinxed us by acknowledging that things were getting better. We joked and laughed together before succumbing to a bitter week of frustration and disappointment, almost entirely (it must be confessed) at my hands.

The morning after one of my nights of rage I apologized to my poor boy and he, with a heartbreakingly wounded look in his eyes, said tiredly, "You're freakishly good at it. Fighting, I mean."

So I am back to counting hours (and now, thankfully, days) of loving calm, minutes of straining to find the peace of my own breath. I am back to trying to remember that though anger is enticing (oh, the power and cold and quick-witted intelligence I feel in the midst of a bout of fury), it always feels completely and utterly shitty the next day.

I have quit worse things. Shocking how difficult it seems, some days, to quit this.