Closing off the reflections about 'violence'

This is the third part of a series following my posts on calling the suicide hotline and reflections on highlighting my “violence”.

The purpose of this article is purely to close off the series. So please feel free to read on if you’re interested in how I’m handling the negative impact and emotions.

I’ll dive straight in, so read the first two articles for some backstory if you need to.

The Stages of Grief

I didn’t understand why I needed to write this third article to close off the chapter.

But as I wrote, I began to understand that I didn’t complete the journey when I wrote the second piece.

According to Kübler-Ross’s framework, there are 5 states of grief. A person may encounter any of the states repeatedly without any specific sequence.

In her book, Kübler-Ross repeatedly warned that these “stages” can overlap, occur simultaneously, or be missed altogether, and she even placed the term “stages” in inverted commas in the book’s diagrammatic representation to emphasize their tentative nature

I went through the first three states rather early. I even noticed some acceptance. But the acceptance wasn’t complete.

Without being aware of it, what’s not being accepted eventually seeped into a depressive state. The wound festered.

That’s why this chapter needs closing — so I can face you with all of me again. It gotta be closed publicly because this happened on the public front.

What I Couldn’t Accept

Logically, I could accept what was going on — the person got triggered, and he needed to respond to protect his worldview.

But emotionally, I wasn’t able to accept what he did — how could you rain rage on a poor dude who’s trying to bare their heart out? It’s inappropriate and even harmful!

My anger turned into rage. And the rage turned into a desire for revenge.

In addition, a seed of doubt sprouted and grew over time — do I have to guard myself against everyone on the internet from now on…?

The wounds, left unchecked, eventually festered because time doesn’t heal wounds.

The Deeper Problem

I can be angry, I can be doubtful. But what triggered these emotions in the first place?

Turns out, the triggers were right next to me — they always are.

My wife had been misrepresenting my words for a long time. She would take my goodwill and transform it into hurtful statements in her anger fits. She’s done that so many times, so consistently, for such a long time, that I’d sort of given up on talking to her around then. Because of this, I always had a fear of her twisting my words. I also had deeper anger, exasperation, and dread that she would yet misunderstand again.

When someone in my audience exhibited a similar behaviour, I unconsciously copied and pasted the problem over — what if someone misunderstands me again?

That’s a deeper gist of the problem.

Then there’s an even deeper problem that happens when people rage at me when they misunderstand me. This threads to a much younger memory, but I’d spare you the details here.

Making Peace and Letting Go

Letting go is an oxymoronic process of accepting and releasing.

It’s never as easy as it sounds, and it’s often never complete. There’s almost always something deeper.

I’d like to talk about my experience with the letting go process sometime, but for now, here are a couple of things that I’ve managed to let go, accept, and make peace with:

I was sad and I had pity for people who couldn’t see what was going on (that I saw).
I was angry, hateful, and vengeful towards people who hurl their rage at me.
I recognize there are many more levels of sadness and pain that have yet to be released from my relationships with my wife and relationships with my elders
I began to understand how my anger, indignation, and trying to feel/be superior serve as protection in a few contexts.

Through this whole process, I managed to:

Gain insight into how fears expand when it goes undetected and untreated
Have more courage to face my fears
Begin to know why it’s important for me write about the matters of the heart.

A couple of things I’m doing:

I will stop hating people who rage at me.
I will stop letting the fear of people misunderstanding (and raging at me) stop me from communicating with anyone.

Moving on?

Two things don’t change, so they are great footholds to work myself back to health.

Improve the relationship with myself
Improve my relationship with my wife
Communicate with you guys — and let’s bring everyone to a better place, technologically or otherwise

Final Word

Aside from everything mentioned above, I wanna say I don’t know whether it is foolish or generous to be exposing things like calling the suicide hotline, reflections on violence, or even this article.

But I chose to write these.

So it means I have to deal with the consequences of writing them.

Maybe there are positive sides too. I’d love to think there are, even though few people reach out and tell me how this sorta articles helped them. And you know what? That’s fine.

Hopefully, these are a force for good.