Picking up the Pieces: The Effects of Rage

I generally consider myself a calm person. However, I remember various days during my childhood where I had to pick up the pieces (both literally and figuratively) between many people. 

My first memory of picking up the pieces has to do with legos. I loved legos and I always wanted to play with them throughout the day. However, this day I was told by my mom that I had to clean them up off the ground and out them back in my toy chest. Now... to this day I despise cleaning. I always wished that the things I pulled out could just put themselves away magically. So immediately my three year old self found the urge to protest this sudden request from my mom. 

I walked over to one of the tower things that I had made the day before, started to laugh while simultaneously throwing it down as hard as my puny arms could, crashing down into the ground making the tower crumble into millions of pieces. Lets just say my mom did not find what I did funny and stormed back into my room, scolded me and told me, "PICK UP THE LEGOS NOW!!!!"

After I picked up the legos in between sobs and sniffles my mom grabbed all of the legos I had and carried them downstairs into the kitchen, putting all of legos in the one place I could not reach, the top of the fridge. I remember jumping for hours trying to reach at least one lego, dragging each magnet down with each leap. 

But then I stopped. Why? Maybe I was too tired to continue. Maybe I got bored and found something new to play with. Maybe it was because I pulled down a homemade magnet that said #1 Mom on it. I don't know, but I do know that I realized that what was important was not legos; it was a to have family on my side, supporting me. 

I remember sobbing towards my mom and hugging her knees. I so desperately wanted to repair the bond that we had. And while yes, you may think that this is a non influential moment of apologizing to a parent or significant other, to younger Chloe and hopefully a lot of younger kids, their parents are some of the only people they care about. 

Now 15 years later, and like many teenagers, we still have arguments. Of course instead of talking about putting legos away we argue about college, random politics, and occasionally not cleaning my room. But now we all understand that we are more than our differences and that we need to talk to each other and as a result pick up the pieces.