Lan's Profile

Let's see, what do people normally do when they get angry? So far, we've predicted, expected, known, seen, and heard them to yell, scream, shout (they must be different!), cry, become mute, throw tantrums, become violent, fight, argue, bicker, complain. They'll shout and scream and yell some more, and then they'll yell and yell and scream...and then they'll throw a couple of punches, oh gosh, don't forget the biting! OR maybe they just might cry in angst, cry from escalated rage. What is this all called...maybe, loss of control? Precisely, perhaps.

It didn't happen to me.

What is happening. Well, it starts like this. When I'm at work, and I have patients that are born in the same year as my Dad, I get angry. I get angry when they are Vietnamese, old, and male. I get angry when they have heart conditions. I get angry when I see their "Boeing" jackets. I get angry when they talk and stutter and walk like my Dad. It becomes endearing. So I stall my time with them. I want to learn more about them. I want to explore our interactions. I want them to be like my Dad. Then I want them to become my Dad. I revel in this so-called "anger", and I see my Dad in them. To define this "I get angry"...it has no expression. I do not appear angry. There are no signs of anger as explicitly described above. In fact, I am probably just as pleasant on the outside as they are.

But there is this feeling. It shoots into my chest. Then it goes into my stomach and it makes me want to curl up from a sharp pain, so as to relieve it. I get weak. I don't know what it is, but the closest emotion that I can categorize it with is...anger. My brain thinks it's anger. But the rest of me is saying it's not. What the hell is anger that isn't expressed. It just exists. And it never subsides. It doesn't know what to do actually. I can just feel it. It is like the sense of that feeling has been magnified to a superhuman ability. Just like I have had the heightened sensation for pain, I have found the heightened sensation for this emotion of "anger." And the sensation is so vivid and striking. If you touched me there, it'd be hot, and it would pulsate fascinating rhythms like it wanted to penetrate you too, but it can't. And that's all it can do.

That feeling must be the combination of sad and mad. Smad. So I get smad, alot. I get smad when I see any form of the word "heart", "cardiology", "1949", "Boeing", "Mechanical Engineering", "Dad"...I get smad when someone talks about their Dad. I get smad when I eat bananas, his favorite. I get smad when I eat fish and sushi, more favorites. I get smad when I expect him to be home when I get home and he's not there! I get smad when I look in the mirror, because I look like him. I get smad when I see people squint as they smile. I get smad when I'm drawing blood because my Dad comes into lab for blood draws before he sees Dr. Schurr. I get super smad when someone calls a patient by the name "Mr. Tran", and it's not him! I get smad when I meet mechanical engineers. I get smad when I walk the paths of his daily walks. I don't know what to think of this smadness, but there is obviously nothing to be done since nothing actually physically happens during this smadness!

I'm just so angry. I'm so angry at God for taking him away, I'm angry at my Dad for leaving me, I'm angry at life for shitting on me.

And I don't pray because I don't know what to say anymore!