Eric Robillard has stopped naming his anger “passion” and has come to grapple with his verbally abusive Dark Passenger.
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Game night was around charades. We would imitate each other’s idiosyncrasies, and the winner would play next: my brother would portray my sister by making out with his hand, my mother would impersonate me by reading an imaginary book, and we would all imitate my father by pretending to scream loud and be very, very angry. Infallibly:
“Heck! Darn! Shoot! Fudge!”
“Oh! You’re daddy, you’re daddy! I win, I’m next!” He would sit silently, and smile with defeat.
Later on in life, I met a first generation Italian woman. We lived together for eight years. We were both hot-tempered. When we would fight and the neighbours would threaten to call the police, we would tell them to fuck off. We would justify our fiery temperament on racial stereotypes: Italians and French Quebeckers were passionate people.
I lost my temper two days into my relationship with my wife, over the phone. I recall thinking nothing more of the discussion than a heated affair. She would later admit feeling ill because of the fury in my voice, and being unsure about seeing me again.
Where there is a lopsided power dynamic, there is abuse. Where there’s disrespect, abuse. Where there is a six-foot-tall-two-hundred-pound man with a pattern of shouting, there is abuse.
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One night after a phone conversation with my mother, my wife asked me why my mom and I screamed at one another, that it was no way to talk to a loved one. I was genuinely puzzled by her statement, as my father spoke this way to my mom, and my mom spoke this way to me, and I was already speaking this way to my wife. Once the fear established itself between us, because of my anger, because anger would manifest itself as rage, because I would scream the rage out, and I normalized my tantrums, and because alcohol was added to the equation, my wife confronted me: I was like my father; I was echoing his violence.
There was no humour behind my father’s outbursts; he knew it, we all knew it, and we indulged in one long charade to survive. There was nothing funny about exonerating my then-dysfunctional French Canadian-Italian couple on our “Latin blood”: hands down, we were verbally abusive to one another. There were only tears and fear when my wife risked my rage and told me there was nothing “normal” about my shouting. There was no escaping my dark passenger this time around.
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It took days to digest, weeks to process, months to face, and years to admit: I was a perpetrator of domestic violence.
Where there is a lopsided power dynamic, there is abuse. Where there is disrespect, there is abuse. Where there is a six-foot-tall-two-hundred-pound man with a pattern of shouting, there is abuse. Violence—and shouting is a form of violence—nonobstant of the size and shape and colour of who it is in any situation—is abuse.
My dark passenger has been riding by my side since early childhood, yet I’ve denied his existence most of my life.
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No matter what the intent is or what lies beneath the anger, the impact remains one of disquietude and disrespect, hurt and fear, and will leave emotional scars. We tend to absolve anger by tagging it passion, at least I did before therapy. It was the only way I knew how to communicate. I used my physical largeness to impose myself. By seeking help I was able to recognize the roots of my rage, and learn tools to perceive my triggers before they reach the point of no return.
Through therapy, I discovered that destabilizing my partner through violence in order to obtain and retain a position of power/superiority isn’t what was happening with my anger, though my anger still resulted in an atmosphere of fear and that it was important to me to relinquish the shouting to remove the resulting fear.
That change in me was because I decided to make the change. My spouse confronted me and I listened. I could very well have dismissed her and kept with the shouting until the demise of my couple. It was the desire to change through therapy that facilitated the change.
I come from a long history of violence: men around me from my father’s generation were taught they were the dominant ones, and encouraged to take control of the relationship. I was chiseled around patriarchal models, and slowly adopted my father’s oppressive behaviours, such as bullying and verbal attacks. And then there are my own demons, my inner darkness.
I would like my voice to be one of comfort and composure, and in moments of distress and frustrations, one that might promote an open dialogue.
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My dark passenger has been riding along by my side since early childhood, yet I have denied his existence most of my life. I don’t think we will ever separate from one another; he may never disembark, but he can be put in the trunk. I would like my voice to be one of comfort and composure, and in moments of distress and frustrations, one that might promote an open dialogue. But this will take time, and will probably be a work-in-progress for the rest of my days. In the process, I need to confront his existence to continue to ensure that my loved ones are safe, myself included.
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The title of the post is borrowed from the television series Dexter.
This post originally appeared at A Clown on Fire.
Photo: Capt’ Gorgeous/flickr
msr. robillard has dropped off, or away from, at any rate incommunicado. hope to continue my inner ferret and find out where, and under what guise/appearance. enjoid your stuff “in the day”, before the fan fell off the shelf into the mungggg…
Thank you, Eric. I’m going through a divorce now after almost 20 years together in which my contribution to the toxicity of the relationship has been exactly the verbal abuse you describe. I called mine “yelling” and “anger” over the years and thought I was being honest about it. It’s only been since entering therapy that I’ve called it “rage” and “verbal abuse” and seen the long term scarring that was caused to me as a child of constant verbal and frequent physical abuse and the scarring that it has caused my ex in receiving my rage. I have been… Read more »
Your spouse deserves appreciation for pointing a finger at the dark passenger. Loved the article, painfully and beautifully written, happy healing !
Have fought this same battle against rage and anger, and you are right – it’s going to be the work of a lifetime, and for me, I hope it is the work I am most proud of. This was beautifully and bravely written. Thank you for sharing.
I’ll probably attract a lot of flak for this, but this piece does not go deep enough. This is no criticism of the author, as most therapy does not go deep enough and a life coping and suppressing is not a guarantee of safety or security for you and your loved ones. My story is identical to yours Mark. But this is the hero’s journey you’re talking about, and there is no honour in simply coping and maintaining when there is an avenue to true healing. We make a virtue of enduring in this culture, of stamina, but they are… Read more »
Shaman,
You are right, you’re coming off presumptuous and condescending. You’ve missed the point completely, at least, that’s the way your self-entitled comment feels to me.
Thanks for reading.
Eric
Shaman, My reply to you came off harsh, and for it, I apologize. But your comment to me feels sanctimonious. You sandwich your comment, and make statements like “this is not a criticism of the author,” yet, you say my post doesn’t go deep enough when you have ZERO idea what it took for me to write this, and where I come from… You might have had good intentions, but your tone and sense of entitlement made me react negatively to your comment. If I can myself give you a piece of advice, and this is ONLY my opinion and… Read more »
Dear Shaman, The author is my husband. I know first hand how difficult it was to write this post, and what it took to get to this point. I feel the need to highlight the importance that not everyone heals in the same way or at the same rate. The fact that you have found something that works so well for you is a beautiful and rare thing. I don’t think it’s wise or sensitive to suggest that what the author wrote is inadequate and that you have the answers to REAL healing. Thank you for showing us your own… Read more »
Guys, not my intention to come off as sanctimonious or pompous, but can totally see how I have. I DO have a really good idea of how hard it is to write these posts and do not mean to sound like I am dismissing your journey, the difficulty in finding in a foot hold and the sobering and excruciating undertaking of facing one’s self. I’ve sent an email to Subcomandante (from a hotmail address, if S can tolerate that 😉 as I want to make an apology personally and reach out with an open heart, no BS and none of… Read more »
Hey Shaman, I wanted to know your thoughts about how the Hero’s Journey connects to the issue of overcoming anger and violence. You refer to the Hero’s Journey as Joseph Campbell referred to it in “The Hero With A Thousand Faces”, right? I’ve been covering this topic on my main blog for a while now– I take some time to talk about it in modern storytelling, but I’ve also been writing about how it relates to the personal journey, or the Inner Journey, as Christopher Vogler puts it in The Writer’s Journey. I really would like to know your thoughts.… Read more »
Hi Jaklumen, Yep – I do make reference to the Hero’s Journey. It’s been a while since I read my copy of Campbell, but what a great book! More recently, I’ve been taken with Iron John by Robert Bly as it is mirroring my healing process, but I broadly, and unambiguously refer to completion of the healing process as “The Hero’s Journey”. The hero’s of myth – Ulysses, Beauty and the Beast, The Prince and a Dragon being my immediate references – they all have to journey into hell or fight with the beast – the shadow. Some of us… Read more »
Wow Eric. I’m a little surprised that no one has posted a comment. So let me do so now. You have a huge heart, my friend. And in the effort of documenting how you are working to put your dark passenger aside, that heart of yours is quite evident. We all write our stories as a way of processing our struggles to evolve. In the process of writing this, you help me and many others have the self awareness and hope to be better people as well.
So, thanks.
Mark,
Thank you for your reply, it means a great deal to me. It wasn’t an easy one to put out there…
Eric