When the door taught me a lesson

I have anger management issues, that is, I don't manage my anger at all. I can flare out with the slightest of provocation and at times, even with a complete absence of one. The boy woefully complains about it. But then again, he should just be man enough to take it.

One fine day, after erupting over a non-issue, the boy huffily walked out on me and out of the apartment. I ran after him and punctuated his dramatic exit by banging the door shut behind him. The walls of our apartment shook in approbation. Well, approbation or not, they shook nonetheless.

Having no one to argue with, I started to miss the boy. And soon after, guilt crept in.

Mmm, why am I so fussy; should have just left it alone....
Poor thing wasn't wearing a coat; must be freezing outside....
.....ack left his specs also....

Reason finally decided to regain control over my rapidly shrinking brain, having previously relinquished the authority to fury. I was all ready to call up a truce when somebody up there (or maybe down there) decided to teach me a lesson in anger management. Or, more accurately, a lesson in why one should not bang the door shut.

The door, which earlier very helpfully enhanced my histrionics with its reverberating echoes of defiance, is now steadfastly refusing to open. I did not know what to do. Multiple scientific experiments revealed that jiggling the door handle and kicking the door did not help.

Fortunately, the boy came back a few minutes later. However, he was hardly in the mood to rescue a damsel in distress. At this point, having been made acutely aware that I was locked inside the apartment, I struggled to tell him that he was inversely locked out.

It can be surprising what agents reason sometimes use in forcing us to realize how foolishly we were behaving. Locked inside a cell of my own creation, I forlornly looked at the person I hurt through a keyhole with shameful admittance of fault reflected in my face. The filmi quality of our situation did not escape us and we were close to recapturing a poignant scene from Romeo and Juliet when apartment maintenance decided that we both learned our lesson.

The next time I try to angrily close the door behind him, I hopefully will remember what I am invariably closing in and what I am inadvertently leaving out.