Anger...

I knew this week would have its challenges and issues but what I did not expect were the emotional hand grenades that have been going off in my face for the past two days.

What’s most surprising to me is how much anger is attached to these grenades. Anger at my ex, which I’ve never been all that great about expressing. Anger about the way he treated me in the last few years of our marriage, anger over how he disrespected me constantly as an artist, anger over how he ended our marriage, without a fight, without a word – well, actually with a few cruel words – when I never thought we would actually end it. Anger that he took that choice away from me, about whether or not I wanted to end it. I guess he had to so he could make it his choice, not mine.

I was never able to be angry with him when we were together. He had enough anger for the two of us put together plus our cats plus all of our friends. When I would get angry with him, he would always find a way to make me feel stupid about being angry and never allowed me that anger without finding a way to be more angry at me for being angry. Stupid, huh? Two grown adults trying to out-anger each other. That was at least the last five years of our marriage. No wonder I wanted to kill myself. I was so angry at myself for not fighting for myself, for not standing up to him, for not being able to tell him to stop being so cruel, so awful, so vicious. But I had no voice then. I had nothing to stand on. The foundation was quickly disappearing under my feet.

And suddenly, in the last 48 hours, all of that anger has surfaced and blinded me. It is so present and so real, I can almost give it a shape. It would be something out of a Stephen King novel, distorted, hunched over, covered in mud and shit and dirt and gravel. It would moan and wail, like a banshee. Because that’s what I wanted to do for so long – just wail.

And it’s what I want to do right now – wait in anger, wail in pain, wail in sorrow, wail in frustration. Just to let it out. Just to give it a voice. I need to give this anger a voice and an outlet so that it won’t lay dormant anymore, festering, waiting for the chance to blind me again. I need to find a way to embrace that anger and make it a part of me, find a way to allow it to come out in bits and pieces instead of hiding, waiting patiently for too many things to get piled up on top of it so that it gets buried underneath all the other things.

I need to make sure to never again allow anyone to keep that voice silent, to make me ashamed and afraid of my own anger. I need to make sure to be heard when I speak, and be clear when I speak. I need to make sure to never let anyone make me feel this way again. Because as much as I want to blame him for all the horrible ways I felt with him, I was there, too. I participated. I allowed him to have a playing field where he could run rampant and never suffer a consequence for what he did. That will never, ever happen again. I’d rather be alone the rest of my life and never be with anyone again than allow this to happen again.

So tonight, I’ll take the anger to bed with me, allow it some time to run free and just be. Hopefully, by following it, I can learn something about its nature and figure out how to make it a more solid part of me instead of something to be hidden in the closet, to learn how to embrace it and use it and make peace with it. And I’m sure over the next few days, it’s going to introduce me to many of its other friends I have been keeping hidden away and I hope I can embrace them as well.