Give me someone to slap.

So we read ( and are told ) that there are 5 stages of grief.

• 
  
• Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
  
• Anger (why is this happening to me?)
  
• Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
  
• Depression (I don't care anymore)
  
• Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)

I'm not entirely convinced that there are only 5 or that the 5 are always experienced in this order.... but today, I can absolutely and categorically say that number 2 is the emotion of the day.
I do have a particular target for my rage ( and it is a rage, forget cross, grumpy, annoyed or a bit mad) and truly he is well deserving of my wrath, however, because my dad didn't feel this anger towards this person, because he, being so much more forgiving than me, continued to love and give space to this person who actually should have had many good slaps and even the odd punch throughout time in order to make him either see the error of his ways or just get the hell away from us....it somehow isn't for me to take the rage out on him.
I know he is actually so pathetic as to not even deserve my wasted energies ( try telling that to a heart that aches and feels that somehow some release would be gained from just one chance to give back some of the horrid meaness) my ordinarily sensible heart tells me that we all know this person is sad, he has nothing and of course sad, nothing people almost always feel the need to bring happy, everything people down to their level, subconsciously or not.
My unsensible, wish my dad wasn't dead and why is he gone when this miserable nothing is still around to make me feel this way? heart just wants to slap someone.
I won't slap my kids even if they are fighting about EVERYTHING and manage to somehow do stuff like jump on my shins with stomping great shoes on ( why have you got your damn shoes on in the house? Get the bloody things off!!!)
Not even when they tip the duplo out and then not play with it.......almost when they ( Isaac) have the fridge phonics not quite in my face ( just far enough away that I can't grab it and hurl it through the window with the crooked and twisted net curtains from having Elijah swing on them despite my threatening to smack him if he doesn't get the hell off them) and push the button over and over and over again so we hear A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A gazzillion times rather than the slightly annoying but cutesie song about how A says "A" A says "A" every letter makes a sound, A says "A".
I won't slap H because his dad is still alive and well and is 4 days older than my dad, and anyway I love H's dad too. Or because he downloads stuff onto his I.pod all day every day and makes this computer so slow and that makes me even madder.
I won't slap Jordan who borrowed some money that I could scarcely afford to lend him the week the rent is due and somehow he doesn't have it to give back even though he promised- and managed to go out last night and get drunk...actually, scrub that, I might slap him after all, he's big enough to take it, 6' 6" now, lanky git, I just may need a step ladder and what's the betting I won't be able to find it because some blighter will have used it and not put it back .......
I won't slap Sophie because saints alive, she is a bit gorgeous right now and is being very kind to me and anyway she isn't here, which is why I shall be able to think of her as gorgeous until 5pm when she comes home and gets on my nerves.
None of these people ( except Jordan and he will probably redeem himself very soon) shall be on the receiving end of my twitching backhand today....... ugh rage isn't a nice thing, I hope it burns itself out before I clap eyes on the subject of my loathing. Not sure I can exercise such restraint as wise and gentle mum or forgiving dad.
Just let me at him, let me tell him what I think and let me kick and scream and spit and rage.
I envy, just briefly, those people so able to give vent to their feelings without actually feeling remorse, just doing what feels right at the time. The trouble is I've been raised so well, taught so beautifully that there is a bigger picture and when we feel like this we should take a breath, a step back and ask what is really the right thing to do.
I am pretty sure that when the time comes, I will be just as I have been shown I should be, I will be quiet and see the eternal picture, keep my mouth shut and my fists to myself..... but today, oooh it'd feel so bloody brilliant to just smack him right in the gob.