A long time mate of mine has struggled with anger management and depression, it's cost him jobs, friends and a wife.
We get together on Friday nights (2-5 of us) and jam on the DJ gear in my garage, have done for 15 years fairly solidly. He's had form of showing up very angry, taking it out on us a bit then calming down and being OK for the session.
He rocks over Friday night, walks up the drive where another mate had parked his van with bike on a vertical rack, old mate doesn't see it in the dark and nearly whacks into it with his eye. Music is going, he is coming up the driveway ranting about "your bike nearly took my eye out" and I wasn't paying much attention nor was bike owner mate, so we thought he was cracking a joke like "the bike jumped out and nearly got me" or "you'll put an eye out with that young man" but he was actually fuming. So he storms into my garage and slaps bike owner mates hand (which he'd just hurt while riding and had the ice pack slapped away to the ground) aggressively as if to pick a school yard fight. Then proceeds to talk angrily with snide remarks and outwardly show he's still fuming, so I told him to go home and he did.
I am not sure how to respond. It's hard to read the situation, but I feel he must have been in a fucked up mood before he nearly took his eye out, not the bike, not my mate who left it there, not what I thought was backpedalling about his over reaction when he said he was so angry because we laughed. He was already angry.
I want to tell him how normal people handle these things with their friends. If it was me, I would have been thinking "oh shit that was lucky, I nearly fucked up badly" and calmly walked in, greeted everyone then said something like "oh better watch that bike on the rack, I nearly took my eye out haha". Actually I probably would have put it in my memory bank as "watch your eye on that bike rack" and not said anything. But he already knows this, because I have never ever turned up and been aggressive to him in the 25+ years we've known each other.
Then later in the night my mate (van owner) reminded me of the time old mate came riding with a few others who didn't know him and acted like an angry child the entire ride, because he was pissed with me for using Instagram messaging and him not checking it so was disorganised for the ride. I agreed to text him, and that was resolved. I'm realising his anger is always someone else's fault, he won't take responsibility for it.
This might have been the last straw, at least until he can figure out how to not bring anger and how to not get so angry over tiny things when he comes to hang or ride.
