My New Year's Resolution, The Divorce of My Parents, and My Passionate Anger

In 2015, thirty seven percent of people surveyed reported that their New Year’s Resolution was to stay fit and healthy. Among the other top choices were: lose weight, travel more and spend more time with family and friends (“This Year’s Top New Year’s Resolution?”). With the new year starting and the assignment to find a goal to be met by the end of the semester, I started thinking about things I wanted to change in my life. I was already fit and healthy, I’m a poor college student so traveling more is pretty much out of the picture and I decided that I spent an adequate amount of time with my family and friends. I started to think long and hard about what people have told me about myself and if anything stuck out. In the recent months I remembered my mom telling me that I should work on being more “warm and fuzzy” after a visit with my grandmother. Going hand in hand with this, recently some of my friends have brought up that if they could describe me in two words it would be “passionately angry.” I never realized this about myself until other pointed it out, but I can definitely see what they’re talking about. This realization led me to form a goal to be not more warm and fuzzy or less angry, but more open to and aware of how other people are feeling.

Three years ago, my parents told me that they were getting a divorce. I’m going to discuss this only because I strongly believe that in order to solve a problem, you have to find the root of it and I truly believe that this is where a lot of my anger stems from. You hear about divorce from other kids in school as you’re growing up and you may even see it on a TV show or in a movie. But you can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to go through it until it happens to you. I don’t really remember starting to feel angry or being angry about anything in particular, it just happened because I didn’t know how else to feel. “Studies in the early 1980’s showed that children in repeat divorces earned lower grades and their peers rated them as less pleasant to be around ("Eighteen Shocking Children and Divorce Statistics" )”. I mean how would you feel about your lives changing forever? I started to build up anger towards my mom as my dad told me that he didn’t have anything to do with it. I knew that my life would never be the same based off everything I had seen and heard about divorce. I knew that my mom would move out and that I would constantly be having to go back and forth in order to see them. I knew that my brother would most likely go with her and I would see him less. The thought of family traditions never being the same again couldn’t cause any other emotion than anger. In the coming years, my anger has only grown more as my mom has gotten remarried to a man with three children of his own and started a life about forty minutes away from where I grew up. The feeling of having to go back and forth in order to see both of my parents is enough to drive me crazy somedays. A lot of times I take this anger out on the people around me and myself.

When my mom told me that I need to be more “warm and fuzzy”, I know exactly what she was talking about. When I see other people with their parents or grandparents, they can’t wait to give them the biggest hug and answer every question they ask in detail. For me, I am more known to act as if I’ve just seen my parents yesterday when they come to pick me up from school and answer their questions with mumbles and noises. On this particular visit with my grandmother, she wanted to see me after I returned back to school at the end of Thanksgiving Break. When I walked in she was excited to hear about everything that she had missed while I was away at school and what I had been doing while I was at home. I was in a hurry to leave and without realizing it, I wasn’t thinking at all about how she was feeling but rather about the fact that I didn’t want to be there. I don’t remember feeling angry in particular, but a lot of times I feel as if I do it without noticing because I feel that way more often than not. What I realize now as I work toward my goal is that I should think about how she’s feeling. She loves me as her grandson more than anything in the world and cares so much about how I am. It wouldn’t kill me to smile and tell her all about how I am for just a few minutes and I bet that if I just accepted her huge hug before I left it would make her entire week. When I get angry about having to drive to my mom’s house to see her because I know it’s the right thing to do, I need to think about how she’s feeling. She’s started her new life, but of course she still cares about me and wants to see me. She’s struggling with trying to balance her life with her new husband and kids and trying really hard to make sure that I’m a part of it and happy too. Sometimes it feels like all she cares about is making sure that she gets what she wants, but I need to remember that she’s doing it for my happiness as well even if it doesn’t feel like it’s making me happy. After all she’s still my mom and has done so much for me, so the least I can do is show up happy and willing to talk to her and see her. Even though I don’t think about it as much because dads aren’t known for being as loving as your mom, he still wants to see me too. I know that sometimes I feel angry about the fact that he’s at his girlfriend’s house and I’m at my house alone. But he’s just trying to balance his new life and I can make it that much easier by being willing and excited to spend time with him. Trying to suppress my anger and showing more love won’t be easy, but I know that thinking about how important it will be to my family will help.

As for my “passionate anger”, I believe that stems from the fact that I am just easily angered by things going on in the everyday world. You could say that I have a few pet peeves. To list just a few it would be people walking too slow in front of me, design flaws (like why would they have the building set up this way? It would be much easier if the doors were over here), a lack of planning ahead, having to wait for people who are late, and meetings taking longer than they need to. I could keep going. “When our environment causes stress and frustration we experience anger, just as we experience anger with people who cause us stress and frustration. People are not always the trigger, unless they are the drivers on clogged highways contributing to road rage (Eldridge).” Drivers is something else that definitely makes me angry. Some days are worse than other where I’m feeling angry about everything going on around me. As part of my goal I want to remember that whatever is happening really isn’t that bad in the grand scheme of things. I know that I will eventually get around the slow people, that at least I’m still walking through the building, the late people will come eventually, the meeting will end and I will get through the traffic. I know that if I focus on the outcome rather than what is currently making me angry I will be much happier overall.

In order to help me meet my goal of being more affectionate toward my family and less angry in general, I know that I need to implement a plan. After doing some research, I have decided that I will spend time each night writing in a journal about my feelings. “Writing about your anger helps you acknowledge and begin to understand it, says James W. Pennebaker, PhD a professor of psychology at the University of Texas. Ask yourself in writing what makes you angry in a certain situation or toward a certain person (Foltz-Gray).” I will focus mostly on the things that made me angry throughout the day and I know that it is okay to write about them because it is actually proven that expressing your anger helps you to deal with it. Then I will write about all the reasons that what made me angry doesn’t really matter that much and why it is okay. If I’m feeling angry about my parents when it’s almost time to go home or when I’m at home, I will write about that because I know that will help me with understanding how they’re feeling so I can act better toward them. I know that writing about the everyday things that make me angry will help me be happier overall.