Locked and Loaded

The last words I heard before sitting down to write this were:

"Goodbye. I don't like you!"

I thought to myself, from the kid-place inside me, just briefly, " What if I get hit by a Mack Truck today while she is at school? THEN she'll be sorry."

The Higher Self of me knows better, and even said so, while I was staying as newt-ral as possible. I said that I understood she was angry this morning, and that part of this angst is just a facet of the experience of being a teen. If she could have said "Fuck You", she would have. But, she was already on warning for dissing me moments before.

I found myself smiling, and even on the verge of an uncontrollable laugh, the sort that overtakes you at the funeral, a visceral laugh, from the Core.

I remember being an asshole as a teen.

I remember being selfish and mean sometimes - being snarky, rude, or sarcastic.

And I know, from this perspective more than 30 years later, that it came from a place of perceived scarcity of power mixed in a cocktail of stampeding hormones.

I asked her, at one point if, even though she was really angry, she could cease the aggressive and rude talk, and maybe behave from a place of kindness.

Again, I think I heard her brain scream "Fuck You!", though her pearly white and newly straightened mouth said "I would rather jump off a bridge."

I know later today she will come to me and apologize. She usually does after a rant.

Only time and experience with anger and frustration will help.

That, and maybe an elephant gun.