Anger
A few nights ago, I was laying on my side in bed, watching out the window. I was peaceful, yet this anger kept bubbling up. I tried to push it down, and thought why? Because I have been in trouble a lot in my life over my anger. My temper has been a wild fire that takes so much to contain. I hurt people, then feel the deepest of regret and shame. Over the years I have practiced with every opportunity I have received. My brother is diagnosed with an Anger Disorder and has a police record that showcases this longing running family hostility deeply. From the physical violence, mental, emotional and sexual. The violence has been the undertow of danger.
If you have ever been caught up in an undertow, you know the helpless fear. Once on the Cossatot River, which is a very difficult river to maneuver, I got pulled under, then trapped under a rock. I fought, I tried to cling to the slippery rock, unable to breathe, heavy currents pounding me back under the rock. I opened my eyes, blurry, to see light, a hand came down and grabbed me by hair, then head, got his arms under mine and pulled me atop the rock. I was chocking, spitting up water. JR was slapping me on the back, making sure I could breathe. He said, "My God, we almost lost you." I haven't been on the Cossatot since. That is the experience of what deep buried emotions feel like when they began to erupt, and you feel out of control. Anger come in like rapids out of no where.
As I laid there peacefully, externally gazing out the window, internally I was fully engulfed with fire, currents, storms - catastrophe. As someone who is a catastrophist and believes we are coming into the next cycle of extinction, I thought of the inevitable. And as was my anger. I had deemed it bad, but was it? My anger is a useful tool I have been denying. I masked it with layers of shame and appropriate behaviors to the point where I had no boundaries. The pendulum swings wide in these moments of awareness. As it slows, the space integrates until balance. Embrace the anger. What is it showing you?
It is showing me the ways in which I have been wronged and being the silent one, I let things go. I have been breaking my boundaries and rationalizing the reasons I did. Not wanting to seem "too much" or "making a big deal out of nothing" or exaggerate - which had led me down a path of minimizing my feelings. Convincing myself I was over reacting, paranoid. It's the Cat in the Car.
Over the weekend I got a major sign of loving myself unconditionally. I see now that the anger has been a major part that I have not loved, I have not healed because I haven't fulled examined it. It is the engravings on my shattered armor. I am angry.