Anger
I’ve always found that Anger doesn’t look or feel like how they say it should
My teeth aren’t bared
my haunches aren’t tensed
I’m not ready to attack
My head drops down
An anchor pulls my heart down
I feel
Down.
For me,
Anger is inconvenient
and a catalyst for eating
but that’s only because
I learned how to swallow
my Anger
with fistfuls of cereal
from a young age.
Because Angry Girls(tm)
are never Good Girls(tm)
and Good Girls(tm)
are never Angry Girls(tm)
and Good Girls(tm) get love
and Angry Girls(tm)
get punished
sent to their rooms
to think about
what they said,
what they did.
Now, Anger feels hollow
so I fill it with food
and things
and clothes that never fit
The punishment fits the crime
Or in this case,
it doesn’t.
I used to think that I was better than
my sister
because I didn’t have uncontrollable outburts
I was in calm and in control
until it was 35 minutes later
and there was nothing but an empty box
of Oreos and crumbs all over my lap.
I was cool and collected
until I mindlessly kept opening the fridge
and grabbing whatever was available.
To be fair,
there were a few times that I allowed Anger
to be on display
but that was in grade 1 when Ryan Bell told me I was a cow
so I punched him
only to be sent to the office.
And that other time the neighbours were hurting my brother,
so I went after them with a stick
but I actually don’t remember that,
I just remember my mom saying I had nightmares about my actions for weeks.
And that other time,
I yelled at my sister for saying it was “good of me to stop eating so much”
and my Mom got mad at me.
And every time an outburst came forth
the consequences were not in my favour
and so I learned to swallow it whole,
letting it sit,
like a pit,
in my stomach.
We’re taught that Anger is useless without Action
We’re taught that Anger will only make a situation worse
We’re taught that becoming Angry means someone has stolen your peace
But denying ourselves access to Anger
Means cutting off our humanity
Means numbing ourselves to reality
Means taking our very real fear center and shutting it down
which has worse implications in the future.
But I have to learn to connect to Anger
because I can’t keep swallowing
the whole world.
