A Legacy Of Hate and Anger (Part 2)

My second tour of duty in Korea was a lot different.  I was being blackmailed at my former job and they wanted me to work for them for free.  I didn’t lose my temper once in this situation and I was so proud of it. 

The first time I lost my temper in Korea was after things ended very abruptly between me and Amanda. 

It happened at Trivia night.  I showed up and she was talking the ear off of some other guy.  They talked the whole night, ignoring the rest of our trivia team. (we won)  I was so angry at her that night I wanted to pour a drink on her.  My friend Julie stopped me and got Amanda out of the bar before I did anything stupid.  Amanda rewarded her for this by ignoring her.  It became an unfriendly place to work and all of the fun we used to have as a group was over, all because I once again turned into an angry asshole, and tore the friendship apart.

During the next two years, these incidents occurred more and more as my anger and my drinking got out of control.  I took to writing the most incredibly stupid Facebook posts, thinking, in a drunken state, that I was being funny, when really I was just being rude and insulting.

When one friend was congratulating another friend on the birth of their first child, I was going on calling him a fucking asshole, and then acting surprised when people took offense to this.

I took to sending similar text messages to friends all over the place.  One time I got really drunk on tequila and sent my friend Melissa an incredibly angry e-mail for no reason at all.

On my last night in Bundang I started out by almost picking a drunken fight with these guys at Pub 210 over a stupid pool game.  I followed this up by going to the Dublin, where I said something incredibly insulting and offensive to my friend Taylor McCarey’s girlfriend.  Again, at the time I thought I was being funny, but I was just so drunk that it came out the completely wrong way, and it was very much a big time insult to her.

Somehow sorry doesn’t seem like a word that has any meaning.

I mean so what that I’m sorry.  I should be.

At every step along the way, people have continued to give me the benefit of the doubt and chance after chance after chance, only to have me shit all over it.

I guess I should count myself lucky that I have a friends like Tom and Janice who are willing to put up with me enough that they are willing to let me stay with them for three months for free. 

I also feel very lucky that I still know so many people in Korea who are very much looking forward to seeing me and can’t wait until I get back.

I did a lot of good things in Korea, but like with everything else, I have undone my positive efforts by losing control of my temper.

Since I left Korea I have not lost my temper once.  I’ve stopped sending people insulting messages and I haven’t written a dumb Facebook status in over a year.

From time to time I will still say something stupid, but at least when I do I mean well.

I’ve managed to keep my Pandora’s box of anger shut.  I can’t control or do anything about what I did in the past.  All I can try to do is learn from it, own it, and then move on. 

I guess I am still, despite all the evidence to the contrary, optimistic that I can learn how to deal with the anger I feel and in a productive way. 

Hopefully, on a Friday or Saturday night in Korea this summer, I will be able to regain a little bit of the magic that made me the person everyone wanted to talk to at that bar, and not the angry person, so many people remember me to be.