I am exhausted, and I am disappointed. I understand being angry and feeling cheated, misunderstood. But I don’t understand why people react in anger. Wait, yes I do. I react in anger all the time. And when I say something horrid, it almost always comes as a sudden blurt, an unexpected eruption, and even as the words come from my mouth, I know I will regret saying them. I guess that overwhelming rush, that boiling and bubbling volcano can’t dissolve or even lessen. How do I hold back when the injustice seems so clear?

Yet, what comes after the explosion? How do I wipe up the lava that has exploded and melted all the life around me?

An old song from the 60s claims that “silence is golden.” I want to be silent. I want to be able to sit back and watch, as my grandma admonished me to do. Sit back and watch as the problem resolves itself, as the villain gets punished, as the hero recieves her due recognition. I guess I truly think that the villain won’t get punished, and I certainly worry that the hero won’t get her recognition. So, I conclude that I must intervene.

My friend quoted a poem yesterday that said something like, “Don’t vex your soul over imaginings.” I guess those imaginings are the tempest that starts the lava boiling. All I have to do is sit and think for a little while, let my imagination run free with a thousand statements, all beginning with “What if….” or “I bet….” And once the paranoia sets in, then the volcano boils a little higher. An innocent comment from a friend, a vague status posted on Facebook, or a puzzled look from a coworker that I imagine to be a hostile look, and out comes the sarcasm, the jealous rage, the meanness.

**I originally wrote this as a blog example in my class in October, 2015.