Pure Anger
It’s only been a week since I last posted but it feels like an eternity because going on about two weeks, I’d been stuck up to my throat in the tar of an emotion, an emotion at least as bewildering and suffocating as grief and sadness. As irresponsible as love.
Anger.
I am angry because I am alone. I am angry because I can’t be alone. I’m angry because I was excluded from my best friend’s birthday. One he swears he didn’t want to celebrate. I am angry because you delight in my pain. Parents cause pain so their children learn to tolerate it when the parents are no longer there to protect them from it. I am angry because the wrong people keep reminding me of their boundaries and the right people are hiding in between slats of hardwood flooring. I guess I am supposed to take care of that too. What if I waxed the floor more often. Eventually the floor is too slippy or too hard. We were unfair to carpeting. I think rugs are a funny metaphor for hair. I hope your hair catches on fire for the rest of your life. I have actually prayed that splinters break your spirit. That the tinny sound in your head grows so loud eventually it is all you can hear and no amount of home repair can bring the resale value of your house back up. Not even rampant gentrification. You would really have to be incredibly stupid to try. You must be the biggest fool in the world to do that. I am angry when you try. I am angry when you don’t.
Why on earth would you convince me the sounds in my head were anything but? I don’t hear buildings. I lift my feet in the dark and wait for my stomach muscles to take over all of this dirty thinking. Filthy thoughts about one or two things that could make all of the anger disappear. My toes are getting cold.
My tongue tells me how angry I am. When it is numb. When it is numb like right before a cavity is drilled, not like when you eat delicious peppercorns. When my tongue is numb like someone is about to carve into my mouth, I know the anger has reached a climax.
Numbness of limbs is a very common symptom of fatal illness, and I treat my anger like a venereal disease. I refrain from socializing anymore than necessary, close my eyes for as long as I can, and drink water like it is pennicilin. The anger passes through me. I am lucky it does. Or perhaps I do not understand epidemiology. That’s right. I do not understand epidemiology, still. Even still. Not even after several years of feeling sick to my stomach sick to my stomach sick to my stomach sick to my stomach like a dying cow. Cows have four stomachs. That’s why.
The anger is a very new or very old feeling. I’m not sure which but I can be convinced equally. Each day, it changes. Today, for example, it is practically a zygote. No one of righteous politics will miss it when I keep drinking water and flush the device.
I decided late last night that I was done feeling it and this morning I woke up with vigor and energy and dare I say…happiness.
10:54pm, April 17, 2023. Anne decides not to be mad.
Why does my tongue keep provoking me.
I fast the anger into submission but continue to be provoked. You told me you cared. We said it all mattered. And I still have to go it alone here. I am still the only one here. I pray splinters break your spirit like my bough has broken.
This will hurt you more than it hurts me.
It sure better hurt you more than it hurts me. That is the promise you make as a parent. You promise on your broken life that it will always hurt you more.
