‘The subtle mental shifts we experience over time and how they lead us down our paths’
Heidi Jones
There’s my writing prompt. It’s from my friend Heidi, who I saw recently at my thirtieth high school reunion.
That was a trip, by the way. Like a psychedelic one, I mean. The good kind of trip. Glad I don’t do that anymore, though. It was hell on my psyche.
Mine is about fighting. My mental shift is about anger and how I deal with it.
You likely don’t know this about me, but if you know anything about astrology, I’ve got a curious and kind of unsettling chart. What do I mean?
I’m mostly fire. A burning surging seething wildfire, even. That’s only part of it, though. My moon is in Cancer, like the old Joni Mitchell song talks about.
Heidi, remind me to tell you about Trina in that same song, ok?
Anywhoooo…moon in Cancer, which is water, of course. However, my sun and my ascendent are both fiery and passionate. A person with my chart is troublesome.
Truly.
But I don’t put any truck in astrology. Just a bunch of hooey, right?
Right.
Heidi asked a difficult question, because I’m still in the process of transitioning. From a bitter bastard of a scoundrel to a hopefully less angry individual, but that’s still unresolved.
I’m not a nice person most of the time. I’ve mentioned it here before, but I can present a polished version of Lahikmajoe online or in my public life, but in private?
Ask Miriam. Really, ask her. She’ll be direct about it. She doesn’t need to cover up my rough edges.
Sometimes she even appreciates them.
Yet how was I before? I just walked away from conflict when possible.
Let me tell you a story about me when I was new in Germany, yeah?
Here I was in a foreign land, in which I’d lived as a small child and always wanted to return to, not able to communicate so well in the German language. I had my dog and my beer, and I was ok.
Truly.
People in the park were mostly cool, but sometimes there’d be what I call an ‘angry German‘. They’re still out there, in case you think this is a twenty-year-old phenomena that no longer exists.
Even today, I run into really angry locals who’re furious about something or other. Sometimes I stepped in their way or tried to park in the parking spot they thought they’d seen first. You get the idea.
Not all of them are like that, in case you’ve gotten your proverbial knickers in a twist.
#NotAllGermans
Back to my story though, eh?
There I was in the park, new in the county as I said, and some German starts hollering at me for reasons I can’t even begin to comprehend. He says some nonsense about an ‘Anzeige‘, and I know from the context that that’s bad. A Strafanzeige is a fine you get for breaking the law. It’s not important for the story.
So? I walk away.
Simple, right?
You can’t give me your Anzeige if I’m not here for it.
The person never called the police. It was a threat that I knew he or she was in no way going to follow through on.
Ever.
That’s how I used to deal with my anger, Heidi.
I disengaged.
My first marriage? I walked away. Left a lot of money on the table, because I got the only thing I wanted from that marriage.
The dogs.
They were my treasure and now they’re gone.
I’ve got new, wonderful treasure, but it just ain’t the same.
Oh well.
You know I adore my wife and our astounding little progeny. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a grateful happy man.
But I miss their floppy ears. I miss how Louis got up in the night and rearranged himself while everyone else was trying to sleep, and how Ella watched over us in the park and made sure her brother kept up.
He wasn’t the smartest dog, if I’ve not said that in a while.
My dogsitter Gitti lost her Joanna a few years back and she moaned about it on Feckbook for ages. I’m sure some friends wished she’d just get over it.
This is my grief. This is how I’m processing it.
If you don’t like it or think I should grieve otherwise, you could perhaps go read something else.