Angry INTJ.....
Hmmm....This thread should be called "how to turn a lurker into a poster"
I see that some in this thread have “dabbled” with anger, but true rage is a dark deep place, that few have experienced. Many will go their whole lives and never experience it. Some will feel it more than others...Some may even get addicted to it..
I have also lead a very sad, and what some would call "unfair" life.
I don't normally discuss my past, but it is germane to this conversation, so let me tell you about it, so you understand why. I will give the cliff's notes version...
I was born in 1974, to a very loving mother and father, I was the "son", I had two much older sisters, and I was the son my father never had. My father was a very good man, he cared deeply about his family, and looked after us very carefully. He was also very active in the church, and extremely well thought of in the community.
My father, was larger than life, and at about six and a half feet tall, he was. He was a very peaceful man, but he never put up with any malfeasance. Once our car got egged, on Halloween, and my father took to the woods, and ran down the kids that did it, made them walk to the car, and made them use their shirts, and jackets to clean the mess up. Another time, while at church, he and another church member overheard a man, berating his wife, and family, in the church, and when he threatened violence, my father stood up, and grabbed this man by the collar, and "frog marched" him out to the sidewalk for a "prayer meeting".
My father was rare, a strong man of true action...But he acted only for good, he left an indelible mark on my life, and who I became. I never saw my father, mistreat my mother, I never saw my father mistreat ANYONE, with the exception to those that “had it coming”.
Anyway... Might I digress...
I had an ideal life, until I turned 13. That summer, after school closed, my father, my nephews, and I, went camping along the river...In short, my young nephew, fell in the river, my father dived in to save him, in the process broke his neck on a rock, killing himself, and my nephew drowned before I and another person that was with me could react... This was the worst day of my life....
My mother, never recovered from the loss of her husband.....And 3 years later, she died on pneumonia at 49 years old....The same age my father was when he died...
When my mother died, I had just turned 17.... From the time, that my father died, until the time, that I was 17 I lost ALL, of my grandparents, and my parents. My sisters, had their own lives and families to worry about...
The loneliest day of my life, was when I drove myself home from my mother's graveside, and realized that when I shut the door behind me at MY house, that, I, was home, and that their was no need to leave the porch light on....no one else was coming...
I kept trying to go to church, but I found myself asking these questions....If god, is so merciful, why is he picking on me?? If god is so just, what did I do??? If god loves us like he says, why did he destroy my life??”
I met this beautiful young woman when I was 16, who Actually, had it harder than I did, she, and her mother, lived in a hovel...yes, a hovel, with dirt floor. Her mother was insane, she had no other family, and her and her baby sister, lived in complete, and absolute poverty.
Anyway, me and this girl, I will call her “Becky” here, lived about 40 miles from me, it was shear chance that I met her. She was incredibly smart, and was beautiful, in so many ways, I cannot describe them here. We had dated some, before my mother got sick, but her mother, being insane, just up, and moved her and her sister one day, and we lost touch. We reconnected after my mother passed away, they had actually moved to my hometown, and I saw her walking on the sidewalk so pure luck. We started hanging out again...
In the meantime, I had stopped going to church, I more or less became an agnostic about this time. All I could see around me, was death, destruction, hurt, pain, and anguish.
Than the worst thing happened... I stopped caring about everything. I did not become suicidal...I just stopped caring about living, I had nothing to live for. (I thought at the time) I slowly became more and more grim, and “angry” at everything. I started driving really fast, and really crazy...I did not care if I crashed and killed myself, worst still, I did not care if I killed innocent people...
Me and Becky, started spending more and more time with each other, I became quite fond of her, she quite literally was the only thing I had at the time. At this time, her and her mother was living in a rundown apartment in a back alley of the town... Becky at 15, could come and go as she pleased, because as I said, her mother was insane...She stayed with me as much as possible, because her mother, about this time, started having all these trashy druggies, hanging around...
Than one night stormy night, literally, it happened..
About midnight, my phone rang, it was Becky, she was calling from a phone booth down town, she was upset... One of her mother's “boyfriends” had tried to have his way with her. As she cried into the phone, she told me that her mother had thrown her out over “her trying to whore her man away from her” and that she need to take “her slut @$$” away...
As she spoke into the phone, in town 15 miles away, I snapped. And snapped hard. All but ONE “red switch” I had, got tripped. I told her, to wait for me, where she was at, and I would be their as soon as I could. As I hung up the phone...I remembered my father...Pounding into my head, about honor, needing to look after the weak, and being a man. I watched my father die, I watched my mother die a long slow painful death in the hospital....so much death and pain in my life, I had never been able to help anyone....and tonight I was being counted on to stop, the pain for SOMEONE..
That night, I went to my mother's bedroom, a place I copiously avoided since my mother's death, and I took my father's .45 pistol out of the chest of drawers, I will never forget how I felt as I loaded the magazine in it, put it in my father's shoulder holster, and pulled my jacket over it. I did not even know WHY I did that, but, something told me too, and I did.
I got into my car, and in the driving rain, made record time to get to that pay phone. As I was driving, I got madder, and madder....and this rage kept building....All the pain I had endured over the past few years started to well up. I was shaking, and crying.. I did not even cry at my mother's funeral...But the tears where streaming as I drove that night.
I picked Becky up at the phone, she got in. I was barely able to contain myself, I asked her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to go back to the apartment to pick up a few things. I complied...
As I waited in the car, I was parked at the foot of the stairs going up to a small landing, where her mother's apartment was, she climbed the stairs, and went inside. I heard men's voices.... I got out of the car, and stood in the rain.... I heard more yelling, and swearing....
The cold rain started dripping off my hair, and streaming down my face (funny how the memory works this is the most vivid memory of the night for me)....Than I heard Becky scream....
That pulled last red switch,
I grabbed a mag-light flashlight I kept beside the seat, and charged up the stairs to the apartment, I threw the door open and their she stood. With this drunk old man trying to paw all over her as she is trying to leave.... This is an mental image I will carry to my grave...A 15 year old girl, trying to fight off a 40 year old man..... It was pure gasoline to my rage..
I don't exactly remember what happened next.. The man looked at me, and let go, Becky ran by me, and down the stairs to the car. And I became very VERY violent, and filled with rage, their was no talk, no threats, just rage..
I took it ALL out on them...ALL OF MY PAIN...ALL OF MY HATE, ALL OF MY ANGER...
Their where two men, in that apartment, the mother's boyfriend, and his friend...they where both drunk, and high. One was in the bed with “momma” and the other was attacking Becky, when I got done with him, the boyfriend came out....Than it was his turn...When I left, they where both laying on the ground with teeth laying around, whimpering, and bleeding.. What little furniture they had, got smashed in the tussle, I don't even remember getting hit...But I had a black eye the next day.
My father's pistol, stayed in it's holster during this whole encounter, I don't even want to talk about what would have happened if one of those men would have pulled a weapon on me.
I was barely able to drive away, not from physical pain...I was still in a rage, but I felt elation at what I had done, but on the other hand, I was shaking, and crying, When we got to my house, I could not go inside, I sat in the car for hours, too spent to move, Becky finally helped me inside. And those terrible feelings of rage left. She ended up living with me for a while...
I still have scars on my knuckles from that night.
This was almost 20 years ago, Becky and I, drifted apart as young people do, but she never went back home, I am married now, with two kids. And have never again even come close to feeling the way I did that night. At that moment so long ago, I did not care, if I, or they, lived or died...I just wanted their blood on my hands..I wanted them to feel fear and pain...Literally...I wanted to see them hurt, and bleed.. I did not stop hitting them, and stomping them, until they stopped talking, and actively defending themselves.
And yes, the feelings of rage where intoxicating to a degree, so strong, and powerful. Yet so uncontrolled
I had been in fights before, in school, but nothing like this, I had “hated” those other kids I fought with, but never like that... Heck, in school I did not even fight much, ONLY to defend myself. I would rather be your friend, that to fight.
I have only recently told my wife of 13 years, about this encounter.
well, he was emanating a frightening sort of anger. The worst part was that the tears were about to fall any moment, but he was desperately trying to hold them back. Okay, he has this habit of tearing when he is frustrated/misunderstood. I just sat there and did nothing, don't ask me why, it was that traumatizing ... err... maybe I am being a little melodramatic, but yes, I fear angry INTJs.
