Or so it seems, for the moment.
It confines me in its wrappings of angst.
It bubbles under my skin, like hot oil.
It seethes from my pores like acid and dances on my flesh like fire.

It is like a second skin, entrapping the nicer me...the more lucid me.

Like a mind out of body experience, I can see my angry self, from my rational mind's eye.

I can hear my unkind words, acknowledge them to be undeserving, but I do not flinch, just yet. Though I know I will... later.

I am unable to control my raging, runaway thoughts.
For some reason, I cannot remember the mantras that I have used in other moments of disquiet and stress and chaos.
They have left my brain--on vacation, I suppose.
No deep breaths for me just now.

I do not retreat to gentler activities; like reading, watching a pleasing movie, taking a walk--I rage, instead.

I'm tense; muscles gripping at my frame, pulling it inward, wrapping me tighter, squeezing the safer me away.

My second self is whispering to the angry me.... Telling me to take a good look at my behavior.... I actively rail against that softer voice.

Indeed, if my entire body were capable--my mean me--it would reach out and bite at the seeming calm and silence of the very atmosphere around it. Just snatch a big chunk out of the quiet ambience, and give it a good shake.

Nothing is as important as my current state of ire. Not food, or chores, or companionable activities.

It is like a parasite, this fury, sucking at my energy and good will. This cannot continue! I am at my wits' end.

And then I hear it--that tapping, knocking utterance, from my other self.... Hey! it breathes in my brain.... You know what you can do.... Get rid of it!
Yes... I reply. Of course! I can write...
... and here it is!

***
Copyright 2002 by Kathy Pippig Harris