anger revisited

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In yesterday’s post, I alluded to the anger that had overtaken me after seeing my baby struggle. Some of you very generously worried that I wasn’t allowing myself to process that anger – that I was bottling it up and stuffing it down, the things we all do so well and that eventually damn near kill us.

I sincerely appreciate your concern, but I assure you, I neither bottled nor stuffed. As a matter of fact, I processed the living crap out of my anger. I just didn’t have time, nor do I again now (grrrr) to write about it. But as I spun out on the sidewalk – as I yelled and huffed and stomped my feet, as I got into the car and let out heaving, screaming sobs – I processed.

To Molly, who so sweetly assumed that I handled it with grace, I will tell you, my dear, I did not. There was not a shred of grace nor dignity to be found in me losing my stuffing on the sidewalk. Until I apologized to the one upon whom I’d released the flood. Perhaps there was some modicum of grace in quickly saying, “I’m sorry. This had nothing to do with you.”  Perhaps there was some grace in asking him to forgive me. I certainly know that there was grace in the fact that he did.

Alas, I STILL don’t have the time to write. ~ Oh, someday to have TIME! ~ But what I can do in the meantime (again) is to share what I’ve already written.

Later that night, after the miserable no good very bad morning, I went searching through old posts to find it. I knew it was there. The anger. The rage. The day that I nearly upended a table in the middle of a lovely little Italian restaurant off the town square.

Yes, I knew it was there, hiding somewhere in the middle of the Hope and the Progress and the Love and the Everything’s Going To Be OK. Because it’s always there.

But as we teach our precious babies, our emotions are never wrong. Ever. Feeling them – truly allowing ourselves to FEEL them – can NEVER be wrong. It’s only what we choose to DO with them that defines us, isn’t it? It is how we harness the energy that comes from them that makes us who we are. We either choose to let anger make our lives toxic or we use it to propel us to make the world better. It doesn’t always feel like a choice, but it always, always is.

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Excerpted from The Storm, November, 2009.

In the middle of the day, in a particularly civilized little dining room surrounded by older couples and ladies-who-lunch, the storm came. I didn’t recognize it at first. It’s been a long time since it’s been around. But it was undeniable. It wasn’t any of the usual suspects. It wasn’t sadness. It wasn’t frustration or heaviness or weariness. It wasn’t anxiety or even fear.

It was rage.

Suddenly and without warning, I was choking on the silent scream of impotent rage. For a fraction of a second, I couldn’t see. The room went dark and the air disappeared. I couldn’t move. I had this strange thought afterwards – that I’d wanted to flip the table. Just stand up and turn it over. To cause upheaval, commotion, noise. But as in a slow motion nightmare, I was paralyzed.

Just as quickly as it had come, it passed. The only remnants were the tears on my face and the tension in every muscle in my body. I felt like I’d been in a car wreck.

I get sad. I do. I get sad and I get tired. I get frustrated and weary. But until that day, I guess I hadn’t gotten angry in a really long time. That day, I was ANGRY.

I was ANGRY that my girl has to work so God damned hard to do what seems to come so easily for everyone else. I was ANGRY that she is trying to figure out the difference between a color and a shape when everyone around her is talking about radius and circumference. I was ANGRY that she has to write and erase and write and erase to get one God damned word on a page. I was ANGRY that she has to puzzle through every single interaction that is somehow so natural for everyone around her. I was ANGRY that she has to struggle to keep up with a world whose pace and focus are so completely different from hers. I was ANGRY that every little thing is so God damned hard for her.

Why my girl?

Why my baby?

Why anyone’s baby?

Just why?

Yes, it’s always there. Sometimes it’s buried deep and sometimes it’s close enough to touch. What will we choose to do with it?