Selfless, Cold and Composed

The fact of the matter is that people have tempers. On the continuum between mild-mannered and flaming chilli padi, I fall, admittedly, closer to the right end.

I’ve become better at hiding it, no doubt.

But many things still make me angry within and I froth and boil and bubble in an
unhealthy way while attempting to maintain homeostatic appearance. The main problem, I think, is that so many things make me angry. Some justified, and I suppose, some not. I do have the irrational little flashes when someone irritates me on the train or in public toilets, and then there is a delicious surge of warmth that quickly turns to red heat and shoots from my stomach straight into my chest. All the corners turning themselves inside out and gathering themselves for an explosion.

I recognise that my temper is often misdirected or ungranted.


But sometimes, there are things to be truly angry about. Things that warrant more than just an eruption of temper, things that fuel a long, lasting, hard, cold disgust.


Bad parenting, for example.

To my thinking, there is no excuse for not wanting to give your child a fair chance in life. Not being able to do so is one thing, but it is quite another not to care.

It is not, for example, all right to continue letting your son wander around outside without any money when he has committed several crimes and his friends keep offering him all manner of shady jobs. It is not all right not to try your best to teach him what you can, to try, at least to give him a sense of right and wrong. After all, if you’re going to leave him to his own devices you might as well equip him for things that life might throw his way.

But most of all, it is NOT and I repeat, NOT okay to abandon him when he needs you the most. If you were going to neglect him, you might as well have deserted him from the time of his birth. But if you’re going to keep him, it is not okay to leave him in a home when he needs your guidance and love the most and flee to Switzerland or wherever it is with your rich, new boyfriend and your daughter.

It cannot be morally right in any universe to dump him because you cannot be bothered to deal with his offence and because you have a chance at an unsmudged life elsewhere. It cannot be morally right to tell him that you will return for him, because sometimes, he will actually believe you.

Children aren’t like adults. They don’t try to see through you or to filter out the falsities you might tell them. To some extent, they want to believe you, to believe that their parents are good and just and if not any of those things, that they are at least loved by you. To lie to them is to take advantage of that trust and worse, to destroy it forever.

How is it not possible to understand that what you’re doing can’t be good for him in any way? Why can’t you see that as much as you want a second chance and a new life, your son wants his slate wiped clean too? How will you sleep in your cushy, new Swiss bed when you remember him, in the institution that he will call home, thinking of you and telling his friends more and more tentatively that you will keep your promise.

I’m not a mother.

But I will always be someone’s child. And if my own mother had treated me this way, I know that I would only be filled with unbridled hate.

For this, I am very, very angry. And it is not weak anger that will easily dissipate with time. It is rage on behalf of all the children whose parents have abandoned them, or simply don’t care enough to help them stand on their feet.

Irene saw my face when I was talking to her and she told me that we have to learn to separate our working lives and home lives or we would eventually just lose it. She’s right and so, as of this moment, I will make that seperation and not bring my work out of my office. I will stop letting my emotions dwell on the cases that I see and will prevent all the angst of work from infecting my mood.

I promise that I will stop letting the things that I see and hear at work influence the way I feel and the things I say at the end of the day. I will get a grip on my emotions and remember that there is a life outside of prison and probation. My life. The lives of M, my family and friends. My breath will be calm, cool and indifferent.

But I am still a little human after all, and for that one boy

whose name I do not even know, I cannot stop being angry.