Awash With Anger

My sofa space is a quiet refuge, like a small row boat bobbing on a placid lake. Here, with my book and thoughts, your anger is unwelcome and vicious. Your intensity threatens to rock my perch and dislodge my book.

I can see you are eager to “share” your problems with me, and I am bracing myself for the unwanted onslaught. The rogue wave that will tip me out of my skiff.

You pour your heart out. List your every reason, incident and rebuke. And still my little boat has not swamped and floundered. But now my shoes are wet and my socks are falling down in water weight.

You ask my advice. This is your reason for pestering me, isn’t it? You have gone from the irritation of a mosquito buzz to a hand outstretched for a lifeline.

“Save me! Bring me to shore!” I calmly tell you what to do. I resist the urge to get too close. For like a drowning swimmer, you will drown your savior to save yourself.

Again I tell you what needs be done. You argue with me and waste my time …and yours. You blithely right yourself and head off, secure in the idea that you know best, leaving me to my half filled boat, now upset where there was calm before.

I go back to my book and my serenity until you race back, in a deeper quagmire because you chose to climb the slippery rock face of your own poorly formed judgement, and now expect me to risk life and limb to save you from the undertow near a rocky shore.

No, I shall not bail you out. You seem to know best. My advice, once sought, demerited and ignored, is as far out as I am willing to go.

Good luck, and leave me to my peace.