Playing Games Against Myself?

I was sitting in my car one night after blowing up at a friend’s apartment that I really began to wonder if something might actually be wrong with me.  We had been playing a game, Pictionary, and I had gotten frustrated with my teammate’s inability to figure out what I thought was a relatively simple drawing.  Having played this game numerous times before, I was familiar with this kind of frustration, as would be almost anyone who has ever played that game; but this time, instead of the feeling rising and ebbing, it kept rising, and I actually became angry.  I said something regrettable, the situation became uncomfortable, and I left.  It was a great way to ruin what had been a relatively quiet, fun evening. 

            In the car, I sat for a while, as the anger finally faded and was replaced with an immediate and all-consuming guilt.  I might have cried; I don’t remember exactly.  I remember texting my friend to apologize.  I texted because I couldn’t bear the thought of actually speaking to anyone at that moment.  I’m sure I would have cried if I had spoken out loud.  I didn’t want to speak to anyone because of the question that might have come up, the question, “Why?”  It was a question that I was and was not trying to think about, one that I was not able or willing to answer. 

            The problem with this situation was that it didn’t stop happening.  It was not a regular occurrence.  I could not schedule it.  But it happened on occasion, and the situation would repeat.  Or sometimes I was able to hide the way I felt, to bottle it up until I was able to get away from my friends on some other excuse.  I’ve never bothered to ask if they believed those excuses, mainly because I don’t want to go back.  I have a feeling they knew something was up.  Even when I managed not to blow up in everyone’s face or hearing, the cycle was the same.  The anger would rise and fade and an enormous guilt would come to take its place. 

            I should say, at this point, that I have always been a relatively private person.  I listen far more than I speak, and don’t have long heart-felt conversations with any kind of regularity.  There are certainly people who would be willing to listen, or who would have to given how frequently I had listened to them, and yet I didn’t discuss this with anyone.  Obviously, my friends knew something was up.  Every so often one of them would bring it up, and always I would have to answer, “I don’t know.”  I don’t know why I got so angry at that game.  We were all having fun.  I don’t know why I got angry when we all decided to go out to the restaurant.  Someone was just being obnoxious; I could have ignored him.  I don’t know why I got so angry when you decided to take your family out to a restaurant I wanted to go to again.  It was a family outing, and – technically – I’m not your family.  I can understand that.  It makes perfect sense.  In each of these situations, the anger came, and in more I can’t remember clearly.  And as night follows day, always after came the guilt.    

            It took a long time before I finally got called out on this behavior.  My best friend was angry with me now, because in one of my terse moments I had slighted his girlfriend.  I think I ignored a greeting.  And even though she didn’t make an issue of it, he felt he should.  We had a difficult conversation.  I cried, in front of my friend.  It was not easy.  I told him how I felt, how I didn’t know why I had these outbursts.  I told him that I hated to feel alone.  I’m not sure how that was relevant to the entire conversation.  It became significant afterwards.  He calmed himself down, calmed me down.  We hugged at the end.  And for a time, it helped.  I tried to be better after that. 

            The problem was, I couldn’t tell why it kept happening.  For a time, I thought games were the trigger, so I avoided playing games with my friends.  Games with clear winners and losers anyway.  We played games frequently in those days, so not engaging meant that I was sitting on the sidelines regularly.  I thought that was better than the chance of getting angry and losing my friends.  The thought of that was heartbreaking.  I wonder how I never seriously considered suicide during this period of my life.  I think in some way I thought I deserved the suffering.  It would have served as the karmic repayment of the suffering I was inflicting on my friends. 

            It’s strange now, to think about all of this.  I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I should talk to someone.  My health insurance at work would certainly have covered some measure of therapy.  It would have been the better thing to do.  And yet none of my friends suggested it either, despite having to deal with my frequent periods of rage. 

            This might relate to the way I view modern psychiatry.  It seems that, anymore, drugs are the answer for our lives.  Somewhere out there is a prescription for everything that ails us.  But that doesn’t make sense to me.  Evolutionarily speaking, we are changing our lives too quickly for our bodies to keep up.  That seems to be the flip side of the coin of progress, the real problem with the growth of the internet and the birth of social media networking.  I was resistant to the idea of drugs.  Drugs were for the weak of body and mind, and I was not willing to consider myself weak-minded.  It was perhaps slightly broken, but with a little work it would come out just as strong as it had been growing up. 

            Instead I preferred to think of myself as being childish.  I had never played sports as a child.  My mother did not like that sports for children are held on weekends.  I might have had to miss church for that, and missing church was not acceptable for any reason short of severe bodily illness growing up.  As such, I never really learned sportsmanship or gained the competitive spirit that those activities instill.  That missing part of my nature was what I blamed these outburst on, and it was particularly convenient that these outburst were largely triggered by games.  Largely, but not entirely.

            Now I think I have a different cause.  While they are a social activity, games divide us.  We split into teams, as in Pictionary, or everyone plays for themselves, as in Monopoly or Super Smash Brothers or whatever the rest were.  This division is, I believe, what caused my outbursts.  Rather it is what triggered them. 

            The cause is still unknown to me.  Over time, I have learned to control myself, and to a large extent I no longer feel triggered to anger by many of the same things that once would have.  What I believe is that I had, or still have, borderline personality disorder.  I can’t remember where the idea first hit me.  Having worked in a bookstore for my adult life, it is likely that I came across a book one day and saw the description.  Borderline personality disorder is a mental disease comprising any several of a long list of traits.  I read the list and felt that I might have been reading an account of my outbursts: unstable relationships, unstable self-image, chronic emptiness, periods of baseless anger, and fears of abandonment.  I was hearing the conversation I had with my friend all over again.  I bought the book and read it, and finally felt like there was someone who understood. 

            It sounds disturbing, even to me, to say that I was relieved to find that I thought I had a mental disorder.  Essentially, I was glad that I was, in essence, crazy.  I wasn’t really glad.  I was still struggling with it at that point, but now I had some ideas, a path along which I could discipline my mind and finally fight what was happening. 

            I did take a break from my friends.  For three months I had no contact with any of them.  It was a rough three months, and many times during them I wondered if they would ever want to speak to me again.  I felt it was essential for my continued well-being to take this step.  Between this distance and the research I was doing into how to control myself, I was able to return after some time and interact normally.  At times I still struggle with a difficult emotion.  I have thrown things (not at anyone, and nothing very breakable) and hit things (like walls, again no people), but I have managed not to have an outburst like the ones I nearly ruined my friendships with for several years now.  In some ways, it’s like a game I play with myself, my mind against my mind.  Now that I know the rules, I win more often than not.