where’s the anger?

You carry both lightning and thunder
in that space between your bones and soul.
Become the storm you are hiding from,
a hurricane does not hide from the rain.
~Nikita Gill

At my last session, T and I spoke about how unfair things have been. While we were doing so he also told me that in all the time we’ve been together he’s never seen me angry. Not once has it reared its ugly head. He thinks it’s time. I’m not so sure.

Apparently, I’m entitled to be angry and that I need to stop taking everything out on myself. He says he’s angry–outraged actually–that these types of things can happen to children when they’re so vulnerable. He says anger is just a feeling and as long as we don’t handle it the wrong way everything will be okay.

I don’t really know how to do it. Anger has always been one of the emotions I’ve run from. Even with all of the stupid crap my ex and his wife have put me through I still refuse to get angry with them. As for the monsters from my past, it’s always been fear and sadness that happens when I think of them.

Anger often feels pointless, like it’s just going to make life all that much harder for me. I also believe that I’m terrified that if I do get angry I will end up being like my father–lashing out at everything and everyone for no justifiable reason at all. He lived life angry all the time. He raged and left lasting marks on anyone who wrongly crossed his path–intentionally or not. At one point I remember T telling me that my father was most likely a sadist–a gem of a person who derived pleasure in watching other people suffer. What if I get angry and then can’t get unangry ever again? I fear it will turn me into an unrecognizable monster.

I, by nature, have never been an angry person. Stubborn, yes. But angry? No way. Sure, I might get what I think are quick flashes of it now and then but then I immediately feel bad for feeling that way. Besides, it doesn’t make sense to me to be angry with a dead person. It doesn’t feel like it would make a difference. It won’t change what happened.

I’ve seen what anger can do. How it can make people feel scared and worthless. How it can hurt physically and emotionally. How it can shatter a soul into a million pieces. I know not of the way that T describes where it won’t hurt anyone. To me anger has and will always have a very negative connotation to it. What if the anger gets turned on the wrong person? What then? It feels like it would make me no better than my father was.

I told T that I don’t really feel angry much of the time so it’s difficult for me to know what to do or how to talk about it. It has never been something that sticks with me.

I sort of look at it like some people are mostly angry while others are mostly happy. Some get a mixture of lots of things. It’s just the way people are. Me? Well, I feel like I’m mostly just sad. It’s how I feel about most things, almost all of the time. Sadness. Always just under the surface. Perhaps that’s just the way it’s meant to be.

Maybe anger just isn’t one of those emotions I will ever be able to truly feel. I don’t know.