Monday, March 10, 2008

Anger

I'm not destructive when I get angry. One time, when my marriage was on the rocks but wasn't over yet, my husband and I were outside and he said something unkind to me, and I was livid. I stormed into the house, grabbed an accent pillow and flung it at the wall as hard as I could.

My husband followed me into the house, so he saw the pillow-flinging incident, and he chastised me for my violence. Silly man. Throwing a throw pillow is as violent as I ever got.

Another time, after the divorce, my kids and I were in the kitchen, and they were yelling at each other and wouldn't listen to me telling them to stop. I was getting mad and wanted to make a loud noise to get their attention. So I grabbed the plastic "unbreakable" jar of Skippy peanut butter and threw it on the floor.

The hard plastic lid broke apart, sending blue shards around the kitchen. And the jar itself broke, leaving a huge glob of peanut butter on the floor and peanut butter splatters all over the cabinets. There was a moment of shocked silence from all of us and then we laughed. What a mess. My kids still bring up the incident every now and then.

As I was going through the divorce, I learned that I'm capable of feeling very great rage. You'd have to divorce me to provoke it, so everyone is safe for now. But even at its worst, my rage only threatened the destruction of my cheap telephone (which amazingly remained intact through all my conversations with my ex over custody and child support).

So I don't really identify with the women who intentionally destroy their husband's things. In the beginning of Hope Floats, after her "makeover" on national TV where she learns her husband is having an affair with her best friend, Sandra Bullock calmly talks on the phone with her mother while she shreds the sheets. I watch that scene, and I know there are women like that, but I just don't connect.

Today I got an email with pictures of what one woman did upon learning of her husband's affair. This woman leaves Sandra Bullock's character in the dust. Actually, I suspect these may be from multiple women.

His car:


Her communication method about the coming divorce:


On the home front:


The email also has pictures of what the wife spray-painted on the Other Woman's car and house, and the banner she had flown behind an airplane over a sporting event, but those pictures have bad words in them so they're not shown here.

I understand her anger, but I can't relate to her actions. Still, there is a sort of poetic justice here...

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