Okay now that we took a break to talk about the intrusive conversations I have with myself when it comes to food and my beginning journey to intermittent fasting (14 hours is the comfortable amount of time I was able to fight the monster beast) let’s get back to the Volcanoes. Now understand that these my be different for other people, and any examples I give of other people’s volcanoes which I believe the lava has touched me in some shape are just MY views and might not be what is actually happening within that person’s mental volcano land.
Let’s talk about my own personal volcanoes that I’m living with inside my head and let me start by painting you a picture with these words. Imagine, if you will, the Rocky Mountains but without the beautiful snow capped mountains and instead with multiple volcanos, some constantly spewing lava and some just waiting to erupt. The trees that are placed in the area are all dead, with only scary animals like vultures roaming the dangerous grounds. It’s dark here, not like night but like an overcast day with doom looming in the air and not many have ever actually witnessed the view without getting scourned. Now the volcanoes are limitless, as in there are so many that it’s hard to keep track of them all, so I’ve broken it down to my 5 tallest standing, and most dangerous volcanoes. Anger, Sadness, Self Doubt, Anxiety, and Depression.
Let’s start with the one I’ve witnessed the most, AND have had the most experience with…. Anger. This one is also the most dangerous because once this volcano blows… I can’t typically control where the lava flows out to and a lot of time innocent people are the ones burned by the lava. When I’m passionate about something, such as my daughter and the way she is treated, and something happens to her, such as another child she’s forced to spend a significant amount of time with doing down right evil things to her the boiling begins. The first time child 2 began doing mean things such as taking my daughters items, bossing my daughter around, and throwing unacceptable slanders at my daughter. I felt the boiling begin the first time my daughter brought it to me. I know myself well enough to know that if I deal with the situation, the volcano will erupt and the lava will burst out with no control. So I attempted to rely on the other child’s CG (caregiver) (who is someone I’m very close with) to handle the situation. After countless times of my daughter coming to me with different situations and asking how to handle it because “telling an adult doesn’t do anything” the volcano bubbled more and more. My advice to my daughter is to always keep her kindness and not let it ruin her day, understanding that bad things happen to people who do bad things. But inside I was furious and I couldn’t understand why the other child was allowed to treat my own with such disrespect with no repercussions. The volcano boiled and every incident became more and more at risk of exploding.
I took the situation to said CG and explained that it was damaging to my daughter to not see any type of accountability and eventually my daughter would stop coming to them when she has an issue, which is NOT a trust issue I want my daughter to deal with as she gets older. But the situation didn’t stop. So I tried again, this time more aggressively. As I spoke I felt my blood pounding in my ears, I felt my hands start to shake and become sweaty, and I felt the volcano ready to explode. Until one day this same child said to me “Shut the fuck up Angie” when the CG was in the bathroom and I lost my shit. I stood up, towering over the child and BOOMED. “I’m so sick and tired of your disrespectful little ass why don’t you just go back to your parents house” and just then the CG re-entered the room and laid into me about how I must have made that child feel. I didn’t care. Not in the moment anyways. I told CG that I wasn’t sorry for what I said and I was so over my daughter getting disrespected and not being able to trust the adults in her life enough to come to them.
That night I had a dream, I was flashed back to being 13 and I don’t remember what I had done but my Dad was PISSED. His volcano had erupted, and in response mine did as well. I had told him he was the worst father any kid could ever be stuck with and he also towered over me (much like I did the child mentioned above) and very boldly told me I could “Get my shit and leave” knowing I was still a child, knowing I had no resources, knowing I had no where to go. I remember the anger taking over. I remember the dropping feeling as the words hit me. and mostly I remembered the undying feeling of not feeling loved by someone who I looked up to so much. I woke up that night, sweating and crying profusely. My heart was broken because I had instilled the same feelings in that tiny little girl who probably didn’t understand why she acts the way she does towards my own child. I was embarrassed that the vow I took to NEVER make another child feel the way I’d been made to felt was broken. And I was ashamed of myself as another adult in that child’s life not taking her feelings into consideration, regardless of the acts of anger she was displaying towards the easy target of my younger daughter. And in that moment I decided that in order to protect my anger volcano from eruption I wouldn’t deal with the outcomes of what the OTHER child did, but would focus on being a safe place my daughter could talk about the incidents, and to offer her advice as to how to keep being the amazingly empathetic little girl she is and to understand that sometimes in this world people are just mean and downright evil, a lesson I never intended for my daughter to learn at the tender age of 5. But it’s all I had to work with.
I spoke to the other child’s CG again and explained that I would no longer be trying to remedy the misguidance of the other child’s actions and would only be focused on my responsibility as a mother and teaching my daughter how to recognize when the accountability wasn’t hers. The CG said she understood and would make sure to handle the situations from here. Which is still a work in progress.
My point here is that repeat action of the anger volcano erupting and my failure to control it is a mirror of how I was raised. I learned to either tip toe around situations or people when they were in bad moods, to go out of my way to cool the lava of others, or just to give in and let my own anger volcano erupt. But I was never taught how to control the volacano, and sitting here typing this at 38 years old I can tell you, I’m JUST learning how to find the little hidden off button inside the volcano and that’s ONLY because I don’t want to be the reason Zabrina’s volcanos are overgrown. Because when you’re raised always seeing the volcano being allowed to erupt, sometimes for given reasons and sometimes for reasons you never understand, it begins the development of volcanos inside your own head, and I’ll be damned if I go out without teaching my daughter to cool her volcano and remember all the damage to her other mental spaces that nasty lava can cause and how to protect (and heal) herself from the lava burns of other people’s volcanos.
Unfortunately these are mild rememberance of the anger volcano, and very much modified to make it reader friendly.But understand that this volcano is one of the most dangerous and if you don’t learn to control it, you’ll never be able to live a truly peaceful life.
Have your own experiences with the anger volcano? Let me know! It would be great to not be left feeling alone in the anger volcano battle. FatGirlRockBottom@gmail.com
~Until Next Time…. Stay Humble, Stay Hydrated~
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