Blood Boil

I was watching myself get upset over something my partner did this week and I could see that every time I replayed the scene of his transgression, I got more emotional. It made me think of the expression, “makes my blood boil.” That’s literally what it feels like. A kind of electrical wave pulsing through my system that makes me breath a bit faster, pulse speeds up, and a little angry ego-man forms and rises up in the pot of my boiling blood. But then I realized that liquid only boils when heat is applied to it. The blood doesn’t boil on its own. A dial got turned and started the electrical current. The heat spark was the scene replaying over and over in my mind until the element got hot enough to reach the boiling point. Even if I wanted to turn it off, my ego was there saying, “No, no, don’t turn it off, it feels great! He’s the one who turned it on!”  But I know it’s not true. No one has that degree of control unless I give them permission. There’s a split second moment after someone does something that I’m faced with a crucial choice. I can play the victim–let the heat rise and say it was their hand on the dial–or face the truth and admit to myself that it is always my own hand. –C