Hello, Anger.

The past week, I have watched myself go through sadness, frustration and the last couple days, anger. I don’t get angry very often so the feeling is a little foreign to me. Relative to some people I know, I’d like to think I have cultivated the gift of acceptance and serenity. It’s easy to be placid when you have a self-contained life as mine. Everything is pretty much under control. But in the last few weeks, I have consciously opened the door to two things that could shake up my life and my sense of perceived control – a potential romance and a roommate.

To put it rather bluntly, The Danish dumped my ass almost a week ago. His planned trip to Reno in October is not materializing as he had hoped so he decided to not pursue the whole thing anymore. I really do not blame him. An intercontinental relationship, while romantic, is not realistic. In his mind, the only way this was going to work was if he moved his life to America, at least for a couple of years, since I don’t speak Danish and would have a difficult time finding employment in Denmark. A couple of weeks after we met in Vegas, the guy was job-hunting online for opportunities in Reno, which I thought was sweet. But part of me was scared since I did not want to be responsible for someone giving up roots, family, friends, sustainable living, for Reno, NV. If he ended up moving, I will essentially be responsible for this person’s happiness. In my mind, if there was someone who would move, it would have to be me because I don’t have deep roots where I am. And maybe on a deeper level, I want to be the onus on someone else.

Being blindsided and having the rug pulled from underneath required a lot of letting go and acceptance. I think I did pretty well on this. I did not see myself grasping and constricting. People are where they are and one thing that I constantly learn is we cannot punish people for how they feel. There is sadness, though, and I allow it to come and go as it pleases. If I can be accepting of how other people feel, I cannot disallow my own feelings to render expression either. A week later, and anger paid a visit. I am not angry at the person. I am angry at a situation that I cannot control and wield. How controlling and obsessive of me.

To compound to this, I was on the verge of kicking out my roommate after she has only spent three nights at the house. I don’t think I’m being overly reactive. I have reasonable grounds. She has a little pug and while the dog’s cute and well-behaved, I have seen her take the dog out to the yard with the slider AJAR, as if beckoning all the critters and crawlers to come in. This would be okay at any other given circumstance. But I live in the desert and I back into open land. You do not leave the doors open. That’s an open seduction for wildlife to come in and have a party.

Last Saturday, while watching a movie in the living room with a few friends, I saw a scorpion scuttle about on the floor. A scorpion! It’s a good thing that my friend’s boyfriend was there to take care of the poor guy. I know it’s a violation of ahimsa (non-harming), but between me and the scorpion dying, I had to make a choice. Then Monday morning came and that’s when I just about lost it. In the year and a half that I have lived in the house, I never had pests or mice. I had a bag of chips and a package of granola on the counter. Apparently, Mighty Mouse made it inside the house (perhaps via the gaping open door left for longer than it should!!!) and had himself a little feast. Ugh. My privacy and my rodent-free house have been compromised and it is driving me nuts. I called a pro to take care of it, but it’s been two days and the culprit is still at large.

I went to Yoga asana class at Gold’s Gym the other night. Yes, some parts of the class were horrific, but sometimes, you just have to take Yoga where you can. Authenticity lives in you; it is not external to you. On several occasions in the past, asana practice has been helpful to me in bringing up repressed, dark emotions to the surface. The pigeon pose opens the hips and someone told me once that the hips/pelvis region is the seat of emotions in our subtle bodies. So when we do hip opening asanas, we invite those emotions to release. Since that yoga class, I’ve watched my anger surface. I have been upset, frustrated, and just mad. I am crabby and irritated. I don’t want to talk to people. It does not take much to bring my blood to boiling levels.

And I accept that I am angry. In fact, I honor it by giving it space. I own the anger. No drama about it, no finger pointing. I cannot allow myself to build stories around my anger which can exponentially enlarge it the more I invest in it. I cannot allow myself to dwell in anger either, because neuroscience tells us that nerves that fire together, wire together. We can’t make that a permanent habitat. I deal with it the only way I have learned how.

I sit with it.

I don’t try to reason myself out of it. I don’t convince myself to think positive crap. I try to seclude myself from people until it passes. And if my hunch about this is right, it will slowly dissipate and release itself. It will go and pass the same way it came….

Namaste.