I am slowly turning back into the person I was before I met Kathy. 20 years ago, I lived in Huntsville Alabama and was a very angry man. When Kathy and I became a couple, all of my anger seemed to melt away. But, during the last few weeks it has started to reappear, and today it exploded all over my coworkers.
When I lived in Huntsville, my work was my life. Everyone I knew, and everyone I interacted with was related to my work. When I wasn't at work, I spent my time in my apartment feeling alone and bitter, just waiting until it was time to go back to work. Over the 5 1/2 years I lived in Huntsville, the anger and frustration I felt slowly built up. During my last year in Huntsville I lead a small team doing field testing. It wasn't uncommon for me to blow up when I became frustrated with something someone on my team did. I was also known for being rather foulmouthed.
In one instance, another team leader and I got into a screaming match over a set of keys. My team, since we did field work in a field often knee-deep in mud was assigned a new four-wheel drive truck. We got the truck because it wasn't uncommon for us to get stuck in the mud several times a day. When the new truck first arrived, I grabbed the spare set of keys and kept them in my desk. Since we were not in the field every day, I told the other teams that the truck was available for their use if we didn't need it. This didn't set well with some of the teams, because they had to come ask us for the keys keep use the truck. So, to make everyone happy, my manager decided that he should keep the spare truck keys, and he would let anyone have them if we didn't need the truck. One morning, while my manager was on vacation, someone came in far out our truck keys because the spare set was locked in the manager's office. After lunch, we needed to set up for a new test, so I went to retrieve the borrowed keys. The person who borrowed the truck keys told me that he had left them at home, in another pair of pants, when he changed clothes during lunch. Well, I told the guy he could fucking well go home and get the keys. His team leader didn't appreciate my attitude, and we ended up in a screaming match. In the and, I got a hydraulic bolt cutter to remove the lock from my manager store and retrieve the spare truck keys.
A few days later, when my manager returned from vacation, I was given a talking to about the incident. Strangely enough, I got in trouble about cussing loudly where the women in the office could hear me. Nothing was ever said about taking a set of bolt cutters to my manager's door. By the way, I never returned the spare keys. Incidents like this were not unusual during my last year in Huntsville.
After Kathy came into my life, all of that anger seemed to melt away. Best not to say that I didn't get angry, or that it had entirely disappeared. But it was no longer in the forefront, and it didn't rule my life. I was really surprised 10 years ago, when a coworker told me that I was to meek, and that I needed to be more forceful when meeting the heads of other departments. This really shocked me, because it had not occurred to me, before then, that I was no longer the angry man I had been.
Since Kathy's death, my reservoir of anger and frustration have been growing, particularly in the last few weeks. I have to monitor myself to minimize my use of outline. It's like the filter that I had placed on my mouth, was gone. I've also noticed my growing frustration with work and everything in general.
Then today, things boiled over during a team meeting. I wanted the team to do something, and was becoming increasingly frustrated at my inability to convince them that my request was a good idea. Then when they appeared to be a boring me while they joked about this, I blew up. I was able to get myself back under control fairly quickly, but the damage had already been done. Wake up and realize they were just blowing off steam, and there was no reason for me to take this as a personal attack.
I appeared to be becoming an angry old man, bitter and alone. I don't want to return to being the type of person I was before meeting Kathy. I don't want everyone to either fear or hate me, and I don't want work to become the center of my life again.
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