anger

(Did you know that if you google image search "anger," you get 99% pictures of men? 

To a picture like the one above, you have to google "angry woman." 

Why do men seem to have a monopoly on anger? 

Why is their anger just anger, while ours is bitchy or whiny?)

Today, I was angry.  I was angry pretty much all day.  I was angry about some stuff going on in my personal life.  I was angry because I have been busier at work since I gave notice than I have been in months.  I was angry because I could not get the carpet people to commit to a time to come replace the soaking padding underneath our carpet in the basement where it flooded.  I was angry because the timing did not work out for me to go for a run in the middle of the day today.

I have a little bit of a temper.  Well, actually, I have a pretty vile temper, it just takes a bit to set it off.  But the past two days, I have been right on the edge of it, constantly.  That means I have to hold myself pretty tightly in check.  I have been trying to figure out why exactly, when I realized that this is always how I get when I don't have any time alone.  I get over-stimulated.  And then I am on the edge.

The problem is that it is not always feasible in my life to be able to retreat.  I live in a house with four other people.  I also have friends and other family.  And since giving notice at work, I have had a constant stream of visitors to my office.  I have had work commitments, coupled with some pretty intense family crises of late.  I don't know how to balance it all.  It is easy to say that I should "make time for myself" etc., etc.  But the demands of a family, a job, and a community of friends don't always make this possible.  So what is an introvert to do?

Today, my only solution was to go for a run.  With Kathy, who I have not seen alone in what feels like forever.  We talked about some of the things making me angry.  It didn't really help to make me any less angry.  Burning off the adrenaline that has been kicking in my veins all day was a nice feeling, but it doesn't feel like a long-term solution.  I know I need more time alone, stimulus free, than many other people.  This makes it extraordinarily challenging sometimes to communicate this need to the people who love me in a way that they can understand.  I don't have an answer to this dilemma.  But at least I was able to identify the problem.  Which is a beginning, I suppose.  But I'm still kind of pissed off.