The Paradox of Rage and Confidence

I moved out of our family home at 16, immediately after I pinned my father against the kitchen wall and held a knife to his throat.

My action of force was abrupt, unannounced and uncharacteristic of my typically timid self. My right hand reached blindly for a knife I knew lay on the counter beside us as I was cutting bread moments before the bustle hoping to make a sandwich.

I felt the palm of my hand connect with the plastic handle of the knife and I brought the blade to the skin on his neck. The rush and the reach for the knife surprised my father as well as myself. I told my mother to get in the car.

She left her husband and I left my father in an instant with nothing but the car keys.

As I write this, I am reminded of another bought of violence with my father which took place several years prior to this moment in the kitchen — an involuntary lesson on how to defend myself.

My father, drunk and high, yelled at me because I wouldn’t punch him in the face. We sat next to one another on our tired green velvet couch for an hour or so and I still wouldn’t punch him. He wouldn’t let up about it.

“Learning to hit someone properly is something every man has to learn in his lifetime,” he barked at me.

He was so drunk his body swirled in place. His head remained tilted and bent toward the floor unable to hold it up. He sounded like a cliched hard-assed father from the old westerns he loved to watch on the weekends before the evening parties started. I couldn’t tell if I was to take him as serious or not.

I was 9 years old or so — too young and too terrified to know that I could have walked away from a person as drunk as he was and leave him to pass out. Also, if I did, would he sober up with a surge of red-rage and take it out on my mother?

My mother was sitting not far away at the dining room table which had an open view of the living area where my father and I were having our one-sided stand-off. She sat on the oak dining chair with her head rested on her crossed forearms she had placed on the table top, burying her face, equally uncertain how to handle this situation.

In a moment too quick to react to I jumped off the couch where I had been sitting beside him for the past umpteen hours and connected my fist into his left cheek once and when he turned his head to look toward me I struck him again.

It didn’t feel like I was the one who was punching him. It seemed as though I stepped out of myself and a character which dwelled within myself, made of pure rage, took control for a moment.

“The first one [punch] was soft; the second one stung,” he said.

He instructed me to go to bed. His words slurred together sounding more like they were pouring out of his mouth rather than being spoken. The life lesson was over.

Let me bring you back to the moment where I am pinning my father against the kitchen wall.

I had too much pressure built up in my head and it hadn’t been released for 16 years. Tiny thoughts accumulate and unless vented, will lead to a massive explosion. My mind was a Mentos candy dropped into a Coke bottle.

A few days prior to the kitchen incident, I had caught him making out with my aunt — my mother’s brother’s wife. I was stewing on this more than I should have because I had caught him cheating on my mother before but never knew what to do about it. To see him passionately kissing my aunt, a trusted family member, and a role model I looked up to devastated me.

Now at 16 and grasping a general understanding of how life works, I spent the past few days exploring my own morals about what I should do about my father and my aunt. They didn’t know I had noticed them in the throes of their passionate make-out session so to everyone else all was normal.

On the day my mother and I fled, my father was being particularly violent toward my mother. He had her pinned up against the wooden wall and things were escalating quickly. Often in these moments, my mother would tell us to go to our rooms. My sister and I knew what this meant.

At this moment she wasn’t saying anything. The dread of knowing what was about to come paired with the fear spreading across her face said enough.

Rage took a back seat and introduced me to Confidence in the blink of an eye.

Another affair; years of biting my tongue; taking punches; him making me stand to watch him harm my mother and sister — it all welled up and blasted out of me. The mental image kept repeating itself in my mind. My father actually was making out with my aunt. All that simmered in the back of my mind was now bubbling to the surface. I had reached the boiling point.

Paradigm shifts aren’t gradual. They are a moment of instant realization of permanent change within one’s self. As I watched him pin her up against the wall, something clicked in my head. I realized I was now old enough and strong enough to do something about this violent behaviour. Instead of flight, my mind switched into fight mode.

Years prior back in that night when I was forced to punch my father, I was afraid of the demon that I had summoned from within me — Rage. Now I had my father pinned up against a wall. I could feel Rage wanting to step out and present itself. I was scared.

Without thinking I rose up and challenged the alpha male of the house. Could I hold my own? Too late, the challenge had started.

It was at this moment a new emotion presented itself to me and whispered into my soul that Rage was never the bad guy, but a friend who could be used responsibly. It became clear to me Rage was never a demon at all, but instead a chrysalis of confidence in disguise the whole time. Rage took a back seat and introduced me to Confidence in the blink of an eye.

I watched my father pin my mother against the wall. It was too intense; much more than usual. Something terrible was going to happen. Jumping forward I pushed her aside. I grabbed the knife. Confidence spoke for the next 30 seconds. Confidence told him what I saw as he made out with another woman — his sister-in-law.

My father’s shoulders slumped immediately. There was no denying anything I had just blurted out. His head bowed down magnifying his silence. His body language said all it needed to say.

The defense lesson he enforced upon me all those years prior had worked in a most ironic way.

“Get in the car.” My tone was even and calm and said for my mother.

I lowered the knife and my father looked at my mother. She knew this wasn’t a drill — all the suspicions she had of his infidelity was confirmed at that moment.

Although years in the making, it took only a flash for the new found confidence in the room to double.

She grabbed the car keys, looked at me and said: “Let’s go!” We both made for the door without a glance back. To change our reality we must first change our mind. I walked out of the door mindfully — completely transformed.

We left to build our new life with nothing but the car keys. I never returned to that home. My mother only lasted 30 days before she returned to him.

To be continued…

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