Why so upset?

Last night I got a text from Wife that she had gotten a call from Father that our storage unit was threatening to impound our stuff for non-payment of rent.  I’d written the check and mailed it a month ago, so this made no sense; but I called my dad and he read me a card that said exactly that.  This was crazy, so I called the storage unit from my hotel room (I was still in Weather City at the time), got their answering machine, and practically shouted into the phone.  Then I went back to packing, but rehearsed angry speeches to myself for at least an hour afterwards.

Why?  Specifically, why was I so upset?  It’s not like there was anything I could do about it till today anyway.  And I’m flying home today, so in reality it’s not like I can do anything until I get home: I plainly can’t call to yell at them while I’m on the airplane.  And why in fact do I even want to yell at them?  I logged into my bank account on-line, and the check hasn’t been cashed, so it’s not like they mistakenly applied it to somebody else.  But the checks on either side of it – all written and mailed the same day – have been cashed, so it’s not like the Post Office went on strike.  And no business in the world would refuse to cash a check on purpose just to cause a problem for me personally, so it has to be some kind of mistake.  Why was I so upset?

Partly I can still get triggered when Wife accuses me of something: “You said you already paid them through the end of this month! [As if I hadn’t.]  And now if they aren’t paid by July 3 they’ll block our access to the unit and I’ll lose all my things! [As if I hadn’t already told her I was going to empty it this coming weekend.]”  The feeling that I am being accused of negligence or lying hits me somewhere very sensitive and I respond with anger; when the accusation comes from Wife, to whom I am already allergic, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard.

Partly it’s that I felt blindsided.  I really had written the damned check a month ago.  And why was this news coming to me from my parents, for God’s sake?  I felt blindsided, or trapped somehow in a net that made no sense at all.  So I felt panic anf this came out – again – as anger.

I suspect those two factors are the reason: feeling accused and feeling blindsided, feeling trapped in a situation that makes no sense and with no warning.  It’s better today.  I’m embarrassed at having lost it last night, at having shouted at the storage unit’s answering machine.  I’ll drive over there when I get home, and try to straighten it out.

Meanwhile, I guess the moral is that a year of meditation doesn’t stop me from getting angry, nor from taking myself by surprise when I do.