My name is Jeff and I am thirty-seven years old. I work as a high-school counselor in an economically depressed area.  I have been married to Julia for almost ten years and we have no children yet.

My job can be rewarding during those rare moments when I can actually help students find their voices.  It is so hard to make an impact when so many needs of the children are not being addressed because of poverty.  The lack of affordable housing, huge class sizes, no job opportunities for parents, high incarceration rates, drug and alcohol addiction and an attitude of overall hopelessness makes it almost impossible to create positive change.  There is one other counselor in this school of two thousand kids.

I go home at night and often become angry at Julia.  I raise my voice and accuse her of not really caring about me-an utterance that couldn’t be further from the truth.  I yell at her for not working on the computer fast enough. I lose my patience with her when I don’t need to.  She becomes sad and angry.  I am too self-involved at that point to empathize with her pain.  That is a big part of the problem.

I have to be extremely patient while I am working at the school.  There are many times throughout the day where I want to tell a student to quit being a victim.  I want to tell his parents to stop fighting with each other.   I want to tell all my bosses to go straight to hell because they are not really interested in improving the lives of these kids.  They are motivated to secure a high position in the school district’s bureaucracy.

The rage and sense of powerlessness I feel all gets downloaded on my wife who did nothing to deserve this disrespectful treatment.   I explode and say some really dumb, hurtful things and my tone of voice is inappropriately raised.  Then she threatens to leave and I tell her that I hate life and see no reason to live.  All the time I am saying this I know I am not really suicidal and filled with self-loathing at how manipulative I am being.  I am so afraid she will leave me that in this moment I would say anything to keep her from walking out the door.

Then I feel so ashamed.  The level of self-hatred I feel at that moment is too much to bare, but obviously hasn’t been a motivating factor to change my behavior.  I apologize to Julia, but I am keenly aware that my apologies don’t hold much credibility anymore.  She says that she stays with me because she loves me and I am thoughtful.  She says that I am kind and give a lot of myself, but she is really sick of my act here.  I don’t blame her and often wonder why she stays and puts up with my crap.

I can’t tell you how many times I have pledged to change this behavior, but I have only given it lip service. I always say I am taking this seriously, but my actions point to the opposite. My only plan for transforming is telling myself I need to stop after repeating one of these pathetic and hurtful incidents. I have no real plan like I do when I am working with a family at school or how I am going to spend my money.  I will actually write down a plan of action in these instances, but I do nothing about my out of control rage; yet I expect it to go away on its own. I haven’t wanted to put the work in.  I haven’t really wanted to face this terrible pain inside.  I am always getting down on others for not being accountable and here I am the biggest hypocrite in the western world.

I have to treat this awful part of me like it is the most important focus in my life.  I have to check in with myself throughout the day and notice if my body is tired.  I have to be aware of the level of agitation and stress I am carrying.  I need to address that at times I have no clue when to accept that no matter how hard I work at helping others, many folks will never make the changes I would like.  My expectations of my students, parents, fellow teachers, friends, I guess everyone is off the charts, impossible.

You can describe my behavior as verbally abusive, emotionally toxic or nasty.  It doesn’t matter what label you put on it.  I just know that I have to commit to ending this nightmare.

I need to eat right and get enough rest.  I can’t keep pushing endlessly and feel like my life is meaningless unless I can change the world in some fantastical way.

How can I keep fighting the good fight without destroying my wife, marriage and myself?  How can I accept that most of my efforts won’t produce the changes I desperately long for?  I wonder why I frantically need these monumental changes to occur.

It is because I don’t feel that I deserve any goodness in my life; that I have to earn the right to live the good life.  The way to earning the good life is to sacrifice myself for all the causes I throw my soul into.  My parents didn’t really give me the love I needed.  How could they?  How could anyone?  My heart is an insatiable pit that never gets filled up.  I don’t know how or when to ask for help.  I am amazed at how much I live in a world of self-pity and then beat myself up for doing so.

I am a Jew and come from a working class family where working hard and be rewarded with two weeks’ vacation was the goal.  Your work was never done and you were supposed to be grateful for having a job, a home and food to eat.  I realize that these values have been ingrained in my psyche.

My impatient father beat me at times for no real reason and my mother was oblivious without showing much affection.  I came to believe at a very early age, although I never said it out loud that the world hated Jews and therefore despised me.  This could all explain my fears and low self-esteem and yelling at my wife. I need to face these feelings and work through them. I think I need to go to therapy.  But, nothing justifies my lashing out at Julia.  I cannot use past events or horrid memories as an excuse to continue my horrid behavior.

I am noticing that I measure how well my life is going by how much I can help others.  I don’t hold on to how happy I am when I see Julia smile or how great my body feels after playing basketball or how much I love to write. No, I tend to walk into the abyss where joy is not allowed.

I yell, but don’t partake in character assassination.  My tone is short, loud and dismissive, but I never use the b or c word.  I practice impatience and threaten self-harm which I have no plans to follow through with.  I get alarmingly defensive and blame everyone else for my problems when I am in this state.  I am not telling you this because I am trying to pat myself on the back for not being a wife beater.  I just want to describe what it is I actually do.

Julia says that my anger flashes have made her fearful of confronting me, but she finds the strength to do so anyway.  I place her in a dilemma of wondering if she should leave or stay in the relationship.  At times she beats up on herself for staying.

I have taken her for granted for all too all too long and have not really faced the harm I have caused her.   I think that if I do continue to do this, she will leave.  I will have this hanging over my head for a long time now.  You know what?  I deserve this mandate.  I need to figure out how to authentically apologize to her and receive her forgiveness.

I suddenly realize that the thread that connects this angry, feel sorry for myself, beg for forgiveness and then have a rational conversation about what just happened is due to having ridiculously high expectations.  I expect myself to be perfect and I work very hard.  I expect those closest to me to be perfect as well.  So if I am tired and frustrated, the smallest “infraction” can set me off.  I can become upset if the mail is in the wrong place and start yelling at Julia.  Does it matter if the mail is not where I expect it to be?  Hell no.

It is time to change this self-destructiveness.  Maybe I need to focus more of my energy into my hobbies and other interests.  Maybe I need to forgive myself for not saving all these poor kids in the community.  Maybe I should do many activities to reduce the negativity of all that I experience throughout the week.  I need to remind myself many times per day that I am on the verge of blowing up because I am almost always of the edge of rage and hopelessness.  I love Julia and don’t want to lose her.  I need to prove to her that this is my truth. The path to freedom from this angst is to love myself.  Maybe someday I will be free.

Stay tuned for Part Two of this story.

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