Dear Anger

 Dear Anger,

I don’t know where you are hiding. Or why you are there. But you are. And you’re strong. I don’t consider myself an angry person, I forgive quickly and easily.

You come out in my dreams, violent, dark, twisted, full of death and pain. Bludgeoning those I love, screaming with no words coming out. Unable to get my point across, nobody gets it. A constant block felt in sleep, waking up with unresolved feelings and unspoken words. Confused at their meaning, challenged to talk to those I love dearly, but were the source of my pain at night.

You come out when I’m drunk, to myself, to others, to someone that looks at me wrong. To that man that decides tonight is the night to hit on me...it’s not the night, and it won’t ever be the night.

I want to hit things, I want to smoke a cigarette in anger drawing the line of smoke in like a line of cocaine. I want to shoot whiskey and write inflamed words on a paper.

At first glance, yes, I guess I might have some anger.

I’m angry at the world. Why can’t we be better? Putting each other down, choosing the easy way out, hurting our Mother, and damaging our bodies.

Yes, I’m mad at parents. I’m angry that they neglect and leave their children behind…making us pick up the pieces. I’m mad at their parents, and their parents, and their parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents. Every single person that was too broken to break the cycle. Abuse and neglect. Abuse and neglect. ABUSE AND NEGLECT. That’s all I hear every day. 

I’m angry at drugs and addiction, and how easy it is to live there because everything else around you turns to clouds that will just change shape and float away. I have moments of being angry at my own caretakers, the ones that loved me so deeply, but their own wounds created scars in my heart that became my burden to carry.

I’m sick of those that say they want to change and they don’t, I don’t have time for you. I want to, but I’m busy with children and abuse and neglect, abuse and neglect. 

I’m mad at myself, mad that I keep repeating the same patterns of love. I keep falling for those that are unavailable, those that want less than I have and more than I am.

I’m angry at the system. Poverty that seeps into our soul and plants its disgusting seeds in our bodies, our minds, and our own genes. FUCKING POLITICS AND FUCKING RICH WHITE MEN! WE, AS WOMEN, FINALLY DESERVE TO SPEAK.

I’m angry at men, for touching me when I didn’t say I wanted it. For hating me for not loving them as they wanted. For believing that they deserved something special, something that I wasn’t even giving to myself. STOP TOUCHING US. Stop calling us bitches for being strong, stop shitting on the word feminist, when all we want is to heal and rise.

Things spinning out of my control, everything around me is sad, mad, disappointed, unhealthy, and unloving. What can I control? Anger is not something I can control, and that is why I’m unraveling.

Anger has always been a repulsive emotion to me, Jesus wasn’t angry. He loved unconditionally, why can’t I do that? It keeps coming out. I cry when I’m angry, is that weak? It all spirals, it’s an emotion I don’t want to do. Gottman says that anger is like an iceberg. With sadness, disappointment, loneliness, feeling overwhelmed, embarrassed, hurt, helpless, pain, frustrated, insecure, hungry, grief, anxiety, stress, threatened, tired, contempt, guilt, jealous, scared, and shame. Fucking shame. I hate that one. Which one are all of these thing hiding under?

i punch walls sometimes, hoping it will cause the same damage to it as it does to my weak hands. I punch my steering wheel sometimes, hoping nobody in the windows next to me see me unravel. It's ugly to be angry, it's unwomanly... why didn't anyone teach me how to handle this? Sometimes I scream until my throat feels dry and hoarse, wishing those in the apartment next door don't hear me, and hoping they do. 

Love, 

Sarah