Taking on the Squared Circle

Recently, I have found myself fantasizing about pinning down someone I know and just punching the shit out of them, Fight Club-style, wailing on them with raw-knuckled fists, until their face was a bloody mess of a pulp and they just lay there mewling. I have fantasized about it and ENJOYED the fantasy. Strangely, I am not ashamed of this fact. There is an anger there, and it is a justifiable one.

I know I have pent-up aggressions in me. I come from a VERY hot-tempered father. I come from a family where parents and siblings have taken out anger on one another physically. For these reasons, I feel like I should be afraid of these feelings. And I am to some degree--I want to steer clear from a path of abuse.

But I don't think the feelings themselves are necessarily a bad thing, which is perhaps why I am not ashamed of them. I don't think there's anything wrong with feeling so angry that you wish you could just hurt the person who is the source of this anger/hurt/disgust/hate. It's ACTING upon these feelings in an unhealthy way that is wrong. And a lot of times, people fear these feelings of aggression so much that they try to snuff them without acknowledging that these feelings exist--and I fear that this just allows them to build up to the point of eruption. In fact, I've seen it build up in that way and then explode into a mess of violence.

And I want to nip this in the bud. So I'd rather confront these feelings than fear them.

Sometimes my anger is just anger and nothing more. I get angry. Eh. I deal. But other times it gets rooted in this feeling of aggression, a feeling which can only be exorcised by being channeled into some sort of physicality. I can tell these feelings are there because they take on the sensation of flames burning hotly beneath my skin, a tightness riding up my spine and muscles like a lightning bolt channeled tightly through a lightning rod. I walk around all day, just wanting to be a human whip and bust my body into some sort of maddening mess of physicality, all fists and knuckles and knees whipping around every which way, taking out everything in my path.

The urge to spew that anger out physically not only stems from my desire to hurt the source(s) of my aggression in a way that I am perhaps unable (or unwilling) to do mentally or emotionally (I know this), but also stems from a desire to have that anger imprinted and stamped onto my OWN self physically in some form or another, to really really feel it and thus be forced to acknowledge that it is there.

Maybe this is because I am a stoic and deal with things by squelching them or zenning them out. I turn myself into a nice, cool, blank stone and let things just spill off of me, the eye of the storm in the midst of chaos. And although this is oftentimes a good way for me to deal with my problems (although it's been a source of admiration from others), sometimes I think I need to feel feel FEEL the weight of this shit to get through things, feel it like a 2-by-4 straight across the brick of my nose. I don't wanna slip into a path of complete stoicism, of not feeling at all. And so this aggression is not always a force that wants to be externalized on others, it's a force that wants to be externalized on MYSELF, forcing me to FEEL.

And what I wish is that I could channel these feelings into something healthy, like boxing.

Boxing with E on occasion helps--it feels good to "hurt" someone and be "hurt" back in a controlled setting. But I can't really wail on the boy like I'd like to--that just wouldn't be right (he bruises too easily ; ).

Boxing would be perfect because you have that energy shooting out your fists like lightning, directed at some outside source, but it's also great because you have someone else's fists shooting pain through you in a way that anchors your anger, that allows it to take on a physical sensation to you, to drape on your skin and hang there and remind you that it exists.

So what exactly am I saying? I don't know. Zen-ness is definitely a good thing. But I also think beating the shit out of a nice, brick-hard punching bag would be its own kinda zen. Lately, I've needed to pound on something, to shoot myself back into that spark-shot of pain that reminds me that I do feel and can feel and, goddammit, that there's nothing wrong with that.

And I guess it's just figuring out how to channel this anger and aggression in a HEALTHY way that's the tricky part...

This is my squared circle.

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