68 - Bad Moods by Romano Phersu

These moods roll out in lengths. They won't be cut short. They start unwinding in the morning and its mid-afternoon by the time they're through.

Recently I've been flying into rages. To be frank, when I say recently I mean it's happened to me throughout recent years. There is a pattern to these rage flights: At the termination of my brittle calm I lose all sense of proportion. I become convinced that I am right. It doesn't matter if the thing I'm right about, in my mind at least, is silly. In fact, it seems that somehow the sillier the cause of my anger, the more I want to defend my right to care about it. "Well, the windows do need to be washed!" I might scream, all anguished, pulling at my shirt and looking desperately around for some voice of reason, some person who might see that yes, lives do depend on me being right. Or you'll catch me uttering "That cliff path is closed at the moment" while staring at the table, clutching whatever I happen to have in my hand, a fork, or a hankie or whatever, even though no one in the room is even going to be using the cliff path and I've not been there in years and have no good reason to think I'm right, apart from the fact that I want to be right, I want it so much that I'm willing to humiliate myself and upset everyone around me, because the truth is what's important, with the truth being that I'm right.

This loss of perspective is upsetting to me, just as its effects are upsetting for those who have to suffer them. I'll bring a dinner party into disrepute. I'll burst the bubbly atmosphere in a restaurant. I'll ruin not only my own romantic stroll but the romantic strolls of all the other lovers in the park. Worst of all, there are consequences. In the past month I lost my long-term girlfriend, who wore a resigned look for half a year before telling me what had gone unsaid for sometime: she would be better off without me. I've also found it hard to make friends. It seems that the 'about to tear into a rage and start ranting' look doesn't appeal to propsective buddies. Something must be done.

Here's my plan: I'll pretend to be nice, I'll pretend to be calm. Now, it's not as if all this time I've been pretending to be a raging lunatic, but I believe that with enough will power and some practice I'll work out how to seem like I'm well-meaning, not a rage-filled person. I may have to move. In a new location I could start again. In fact, since I could easily make bad impressions on everyone I met while learning to be nice, I may have to move to an interim place, where I can practise not being a mentalist, where I can walk the streets encountering queue-jumpers, or those who sneeze over everything, while learning not to react. I will fail, and not only once; a string of failures awaits me. This is why a middle-place will come in handy. I'll get it out of my system there. Perhaps it should be a peaceful place. If I try moving to some messy city then the noise and motion will make it impossible for me to keep my emotions locked down. I'll start planning and let you know how I get on.