Rargh

"Day 4 - A habit that you wish you didn't have"

 I don't feel like I deal with my anger very well. Most of the time, my responses fall into one of these two categories:

Situation 1: I am angry at someone I feel very comfortable with.
Response: FIGHT (by getting sarcastic, rude, loud, etc.; throwing pillows)

Situation 2: I am angry at someone I do not feel comfortable with.
Response: FLIGHT (by withdrawing into a quietly polite ball of boiling resentment)

(The internet is a whole different matter. I'm usually pretty calm because I get so much time to think about what to say. (This was a lot of the reason I got voted into being a Wikipedia admin.) It only breaks down if I'm feeling fragile, and then I rush my responses and revert to one of the above, usually the latter.)

The worst is when I'm angry at someone I'm only sort of comfortable with, like a family member who doesn't live with me or an old classmate who insists on something that hits me in a bad place. Then I tend to kind of blow up sideways like a firework factory reject and run away.

I need to get better at not feeling threatened by bullies, at not being offended by ignorant rudeness, at not being outraged by irrationality, and at not expecting other people to try to be polite just because I do. Too often I let my emotions make me powerless to actually argue, so I give up in despair.

I also need to stop expecting all my time to be my own so that I can be more patient with Daniel when he's fussy. I need to have a much less sharp, critical, snipey tongue when I talk to my eternal companion, who has never once done anything to hurt or annoy me on purpose.

Meanwhile... I carry around a lot of leftover resentment about one or two things that you'd think were small, but mattered a lot to me. They happened a long time ago. I don't know how to let go of them. I should probably figure it out. It's really, really hard.