It doesn’t happen often, but on the rare occasion that I get angry— fist-balling, teeth-baring, scream-roaring angry— I find both a cathartic pleasure and a cold remorse in it.
The pleasure is derived from the fact that I don’t let myself get angry often. I take pride in being a happy-go-lucky, easygoing type person, but I can only suppress so much. It builds for a while, all the stress and anxiety and rage I had denied myself to express in the first place, it builds and builds and builds until my capacity for handling emotion is so strained that one single brush with a pinhead can— pop— make it all come flowing out in an absolutely earthshaking and orgasmic river of ire and fury. When I’m in the throes of wrath, I feel like I could break anyone or anything I desired. I think of things to make myself angrier, call forth memories long buried to stoke the fire, enjoy this ride while it lasts. Ah yes… the power. The power I deny myself to wield on a regular basis rushes through my veins and my arms twitch with the urge. The urge. What is so urgent I’m not quite certain, but I feel like I need to do something, change something… hurt something? I daresay that is the instinctive desire, but I can never find anything I want to hurt. Not really, anyway. Which brings me to the second part of my experience with anger: the sobering realization of What Just Happened.
Much like sitting in a bathtub after the water has drained, after going through a really heavy patch of tempestuous emotions, I tend to ponder why I let myself get in this situation. Why didn’t I get out of the tub when I first pulled the plug? It could be something as simple as I enjoyed the feel of the warm water draining around me, the gentle force it exerts as it swirls it’s way down into oblivion, pulling me like a clingy lover’s arms around my body. However, before I know it, the bath is empty, and I’m just a naked fool left sitting in an empty tub. The chill quickly sets in as I see my loved ones’ wide eyes, realizing only then just how naked I am. Like a fish in fresh air, I’m left sputtering and choking helplessly, trying desperately to say “I’m sorry” a thousand times at once. A cold slap in the face from an arctic wave as I realize what I’ve done.
This was once a coherent thought but now it’s just word vomit so enjoy I’m not cleaning it up
