Pretty Lynne Writes

I’m so fucking angry. 

It has taken some time for me to get to this place and now that it’s happening, I don’t like it. It feels like it’s not going to stop. It feels like a wave of fury that is going to knock me off my feet and roil me around in its riptide until I drown. 

This is a strange thought to me because to be angry always felt safer than being sad, in the past. I’ve made reference to being taught not to feel anything (or at least talk about my feelings), but I was familiar with anger. It was okay to be angry about the neighbours making too much noise or the person driving too slowly in front of you. It was alright to be angry about the government but not alright to be angry about the way women were treated. 

My mother once leaned over to me during a performance of Macbeth and said “I admire you for your convictions but you’re such an angry feminist. I hope you temper that some.” I have since learned about the ways women carry water for the patriarchy. 

Anger teaches us when something feels unjust. Sometimes it alerts us to the fact that we are letting something happen that we resent. It teaches us about holding boundaries for ourselves, about what we will and will not tolerate any longer. 

I learned somewhere along the way that anger is a secondary emotion. It arises when you don’t want to let yourself feel fear, shame, or hurt, isolation, hopelessness, incompetence, or betrayal. Sometimes people call anger a “blanket emotion,” because if you look deeper there is more to be found and understood. The theory is that if you can find the feeling underneath that and let yourself feel that, you can process your anger and get to the real crux of the problem. 

No one can dispute that we are angrier as a society in recent years. I think it started before the pandemic, but the fear and mistrust that developed during that time fed the ravenous anger machine of social media and politics. We all know about rage bait and rage farming. Anger gets engagement, and engagement gets imaginary internet points that feel meaningful.

A lot of anger is justified if you believe climate change is real, people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, and that wealth is unfairly distributed in our capitalist structure. I think people aren’t sure how to deal with their anger, and raging online feels like it accomplishes something.  

But my anger is more personal, right now. This tsunami has been coming for a long time and I’m just seeing it about to hit, having been idly lying on the beach pretending everything is fine.  

I couldn’t let myself feel angry because it meant facing the mistakes I made in accepting treatment I would never accept now. It meant I smoothed the way for someone for many years who did not have my needs in mind. It means I’m still doing that to some extent, and that I need to change my ways. 

Underneath the wave (to mix my metaphors) is fear of being alone, shame, hurt, and a sense that maybe I deserved some of what happened. I think that’s why I am afraid the anger will bowl me over and drown me. 

If you live near a beach, you know that the way to react to being caught in a riptide is to stop fighting and let it take you. The riptide will tumble you in circles but eventually spit you out on the other end. You just have to withstand the underwater mêlée. It’s in fighting the riptide that you place yourself in danger of drowning. 

So, this is me surrendering to my anger and letting it carry me where I need to go. I should find myself on a new beach, if all goes well.