FRIday, JANUARY 31, 2003
Seeing beauty in life at long last
"It's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once ... and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst."
- LESTER BURNHAM, "American Beauty"
On at least one level, I've been filled with anger for about 40 years. I've been mad at friends, relatives and myself. I've been mad at employers, politicians and people on the street. I've been mad at people who hit my car and people whose cars I hit.
I've been mad at people who made bad movies, bad television shows and bad music. People who wrote bad books and made a lot of money. People who got the jobs I wanted or offered me ones I didn't want.
I've been mad at girls I wanted to date who said no and girls I didn't want to date who chased me. I've spent more than 20 years being mad at a woman I once loved enough to marry.
That's one heck of a lot of anger for someone who has essentially had a damn good life. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if I'd had to deal with poverty, a blindingly dull career or a debilitating disease.
Actually, maybe I have. If there's one thing I have been learning in the last few weeks, there may be few sicknesses that have a worse effect on us than the way anger eats away at our souls.
Two years ago, I thought everything was perfect in my life. I had a great wife, two wonderful kids and a job I was born to do. But I wasn't happy. I was leading something of a double life, and the lies I had to tell to maintain it were causing me to be constantly angry with myself.
Then I had my job taken away from me and I was thrown into doing something I had never wanted to do. My anger doubled and redoubled, and my blood pressure started climbing. I still had the great wife and the wonderful kids, but I felt like I was walking a finer line every day and disaster was right around the corner.
I started taking pills to sleep at night and pills to stay awake in the daytime. Every time I saw my boss at work, I saw the man who had stolen the job I loved and made me do something else. When I look back on it now, I'm amazed I made it through the last two years without blowing up and getting fired.
Last summer, my wife found out about the lies I had been telling her. They dealt with money, one of the two greatest bones of contention in a marriage. Miracle of miracles, she forgave me on the condition that I see an analyst about my problem. The smartest thing I ever did was realize what a miracle had just occurred. I had fully expected to be on the street, and I was willing to do almost anything to save my marriage.
I started seeing a psychologist in October and I made one promise to myself. I wasn't going to hold anything back. I had spent a year in analysis when I was 19, spending $75 of my parents' money one day a week and getting very little out of it.
This time, even though Blue Cross would be paying the lion's share, I vowed I was going to make it mean something. I was two months from my 53rd birthday and I figured I might have a good 20 or 30 years left to accomplish something if I could straighten myself out.
I spent the first four hours telling her my life story. I've always been a great talker, especially when I'm discussing my favorite topic -- myself. But it was after those sessions things started to get difficult. I talked about the bad things that had happened to me and the bad things I had brought upon myself.
One thing seemed to come through it all, one thing the doctor noticed, was the anger.
"It's obvious to me you were carrying around so much anger," she said
I resisted the temptation to be sarcastic. For someone who always had considered himself reasonably self-aware, I never really knew just how much anger and resentment had been the underlying forces in so much of my life.
Even when I was happy, I wasn't really happy.
I remember what two different women had said to me.
"I wonder if my baby will ever be happy again."
"I'm sick and tired of you always being depressed."
You might have guessed that I married both of those women. What might not be as apparent is that it was the first one who divorced me and the second one who stood by me and fought to keep our marriage intact.
The first is the one who provided me with 25 years of angst; the second is the one I'll love till the day I die.
"Your wife is an amazing woman."
I didn't need my doctor to tell me that, but sometimes it helps when people reinforce what we already know. People who don't know Nicole very well tend to underrate her, but I've never known anyone who really understands her who isn't crazy about her.
Me, I'm the president of her fan club and always will be.
Three weeks ago, I had a breakthrough of sorts. For the first time, I went into a session unsure of what I would discuss. As I struggled to get through the 50 minutes, a lot of my anger -- both at myself and at others -- spilled out. At the end of the hour, my doctor congratulated me on working hard.
That was January 9th. The next day, I played golf at Empire Lakes -- my favorite course -- and played pretty well. I didn't break 100, but it was the first time I had been on the links in five months and I had a great time.
After a relatively peaceful weekend, I returned to work. Nearly three weeks have passed since then, and I have had 14 consecutive workdays without any anger, any despair or any regrets. I've been happy at home, too. I'm eating well and sleeping well, and I feel comfortable in my own skin for the first time in a lot of years.
It's a very strange feeling.
I joke with my son, who this year has a 4.0 average, has made the all-state band and who has finished all the requirements for Eagle Scout, "Who are you and what have you done with Virgile?" Still, I'm the one who feels different.
I've been a good dad and not as good a husband. I've let anger at things that happened 40 years ago affect me and the people in my life ever since.
But somehow it all seems different now. I still have a lot of work to do with the doctor, but I really do seem to have let go of my anger. I don't really have an explanation for it, although it's possible that it really is hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world.
