Man Rage

I got a phone call from my brother the other day and it wasn’t a happy one. I haven’t heard from him since Christmas because his e-mails have been limited with the whole Wikileaks thing happening so he can’t really e-mail us that much. One thing was clear though, after our conversation: my brother has some serious anger problems. He’s kind of always had anger problems since puberty but they’re escalating and only getting worse. Part of me wondered if Shannon was going to be able to help him with that, but apparently not.

I was surprised that he called me and once we got some small talk out of the way he got into the reason for the phone call.

“Shannon’s pissing me off.”

“Um…okay.”

“She keeps asking me what I’m going to do when I get back after my summer job is done and I don’t want to think about it right now.”

“Well, that’s understandable. Why is she being so insistent?”

“I don’t know but I don’t see the point in making a decision right now because she’s still waiting to hear back from a bunch of places at the end of March. But she keeps sending me applications and audition info. Not only that, but she’s irritated because she has to wait to hear back from all these people for a long time and it’s just annoying.”

I don’t think I’ve ever explained what my brother does when he isn’t in Afghanistan. My brother is an actor and a certified stunt man and Shannon is getting her master’s degree in theatre directing. They met while my brother was in his undergrad, he was cast in a show she was directing and they became friends and shortly before he left for Afghanistan they began dating. Currently, this is my brother’s second longest relationship and it will probably become his longest if they make it a few more months. The applications Shannon is applying for are for a ton of different jobs all over the place.

“So, you don’t want to apply to anything until after Shannon makes a decision on where she’s going to go?”

“Not necessarily. I just don’t want to go to Nepal.”

“I’m sorry?”

“She applied for something in Nepal and I told her I wouldn’t go to Nepal with her and now she’s pissed.”

“Why is she mad? Did she think you actually would go to Nepal?”

“I told her I would move with her and I guess she took it to mean I would move anywhere.”

“So why are you mad that she’s sending you applications and stuff?”

“Because I told her not to and now I’m interested in all of them.”

“I’m really confused. Do you want me to tell Shannon to back off or what do you want me to do? You have a summer job lined up teaching at that summer camp, so I don’t know why Shannon wants you to look for more work. Can’t you just wait until you’re not in a combat zone full time?”

“NO! The deadlines will have passed by then.”

“But you can go on auditions over the summer while teaching. I don’t know why Shannon’s being so pushy about having another job lined up after the teaching one, especially when it’s unclear if she’ll even be around. This is how theatre works, both of you know that. There’s no such thing as a full-time acting job. Why is she demanding that you have everything planned out until next year?”

“Shannon isn’t demanding anything, Faith!”

“Can you calm down please? There’s no need to yell. I don’t know what you want me to do. Do you want me to call her and ask her to back off?”

“Yeah, you know what, I would love for you to call her because Shannon thinks you and mom and dad hate her, so yeah it would be great if you would call her.”

“I don’t want to call her, Justin. I don’t think it’s necessary that I like her, either. What do you want me to do? Hop on a plane just to have coffee with her? She lives like 1,000 miles away from here.”

Then he started yelling and angrily sighing and saying things that didn’t make sense. Eventually he got to this whole moving away from our parents thing:

“Yeah well when I get back I’m going to live in my apartment for a month until my lease is up and then I’m leaving and never coming back.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to move to somewhere where they won’t visit me.”

“Well, with this attitude I don’t see why they would want to.”

“Shut up Faith, you don’t get it.”

I rolled my eyes, “I’m SO over your teenage angst of hating your family.”

He started yelling about things that didn’t make sense and reminded me of an angsty teenager. It was like a wave of incoherent angry thoughts that I just tuned out. His phone connection cut out shortly thereafter and to be honest, I have absolutely NO idea what he’s upset about. I don’t know how much of it is Shannon or just being bored overseas because all he does is work, eta, and sleep, I don’t know if something else is bothering him. All I know is that he’s a very angry person and I’m getting sick and tired of it. I really don’t deserve to be yelled at on the phone all the time for asking even the simplest of questions and neither do my parents.

I just don’t know what his deal is. Part of me wonders if this anti-family view he has is because in high school it was the “in” thing to hate your family amongst his group of friends. I’m starting to think that after awhile he just started to believe the act he was peddling even though it was based on nothing.