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I have been pondering and pondering these questions that my wife has been asking me again and again: “Why do you hate me so much?” and “Why are you so angry all the time?”
I have become a wrecking ball of anger. I am just angry all the time. Even when my anger is not being displayed or manifested, I am churning and burning inside already so that any one little thing can set me off. I can have a conversation with my wife where I am like a pendulum swinging back and forth in and out of fits of anger and irrationality. There are even times when I get so angry that I cannot think rationally. I get paralyzed unable to move, unable to think. 
Sometimes, it is next to impossible to get myself out of that stage of mind. It usually takes me doing something else entirely before I can calm myself down. And then, it was as if I was taking drugs because I don’t recall much of anything. Maybe it’s because I am so filled with emotions, adrenaline, or some other hormone or medical hoopla that I know nothing about.
However, this I do know. My anger towards anyone is a manifestation of my hatred of myself. I hate myself. I hate who I’ve become. I hate what I do. I hate me. I am an emotional ball of junk. I am always angry, yet always sad. I hate myself. Yes, strong words, but it is how I feel.
So besides already hating myself and being upset and angry about that, just looking at my wife can cause me to become angry. But how? Just looking at my wife makes me think how inadequate, how disappointing, how irresponsible, how pathetic, how idiotic, and how stupid I am. Just looking at my wife reminds me how insufficient I am, how I am not coming close to meeting just 1 or if I’m lucky 2 of her needs. Just looking at my wife, reminds me of how worthless I am as a husband and sometimes as a father. It reminds me of how much of a jerk I am and how I am not that much of a man in the first place. It reminds me how I am falling short of all my responsibilities, failing to follow through, failing to do the things I said I would do, failing to complete my list of daily tasks, failing to complete any of my projects. Looking at my wife reminds me how lazy I am, how fat I am, how insensitive I am, and how much I hurt people, especially her.
And because of this, I hate myself. Instead of doing any of the things I know I should do, I do the very things I shouldn’t…though I am not like Paul (Romans 7)…I am must worse than the depiction he gives there. I hate that I don’t make my wife a better person; rather, I am certain that I make her worse. I hate that I don’t make enough money to make a halfway decent living. I hate that I can’t give her the smallest thing without it breaking our budget. I hate that there is always strife and anger in our home. I hate that I have destroyed our dreams again and again. I hate that I am so forgetful and so irresponsible. I hate myself.
At night I am so tense. There is a constant, steady flow of background noise, a constant ringing in my ears. I am beginning to have headaches again and again as I did when I was a child. Because of the way I feel, I have no desire to read my Bible because I know that it says that I shouldn’t hate myself, etc, etc. I know that it tells me all the things I should be doing (that I already know I should be doing) that I am not doing, which only reinforces my hatred of myself. However, eventually from exhaustion (because I feel as though I live in a state of exhaustion), I fall asleep (yet, I can fall asleep any time any where, which is probably a sign of sleep apnea).
Many times over I think how much better my wife would have it if I were not in her life. If I would just leave then her life would get better almost instantaneously. It would take the burden off of her for constantly contemplating separation. It would allow her to tell the truth of who I really am to the kids. I would give her the freedom to finally tell everyone about the real me.
So if you ever wonder why a husband gets angry “unjustifiably” at their wife, especially if they are an addict, they are probably thinking/feeling the same things as I do.
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