Service of Anger

 It is a beautiful fog outside this morning. I heard the ducks flying overhead and in the moment wished I was at a lake, covered with fog to take video. The thought of not being able to do that brought tears instantly and an anger. This isn't sorrow, this is rage. Magically thinking and pretending it is going away hasn't been working. Decades of therapy and talking about these feelings isn't working. Medications aren't working, constantly being aware of my thoughts isn't working. And now, worst of all, my spirituality is failing. My belief that there is something more is dissipating in painful quickness. 

I lived at the bottom of Cypress Hill. My stepfather still owns the shanty shack at the bottom of it. Decaying dilapidating infested nest of misery. Drug addicts sleeping all around the streets and in the sewers. It isn't safe. At the top of this hill, right before you got to the "black projects" lived a friend from my youth, who later turned into a high school roommate. Her father was raping her throughout her childhood. When her mother had enough, she didn't leave the man, she moved her daughter out to the shanty they owned next to their house. So her daughter could sleep and have a life without being assaulted while she tried to sleep and be a normal child. None of us were normal or had anything remotely normal as children. This friend now sits in prison for stabbing her mother and daughter to death.

When I told my mother the horrors I had been going through, at the insistence of an aunt who said she had my back, but didn't, I was thrown on the ground and almost strangled to death. When I got free, I ran. I remember every foot pounding against the street as I ran as fast as I could to my aunt's house, thinking there was protection. There wasn't. She called my mom and they came and got me and brought me home like nothing had happened. That was the beginning of more hell that led to me ultimately leaving. I expected my "boyfriend" to help once I left again. He had sex with me then said there was nothing he could do. Later that night, I came across some people that let me stay the night. I was horrified what would happen to me. They were kind, I slept. The next morning I set out wandering the streets.

I was wearing a yellow jumper, crotch covered in blood. I had started my period. At least I wasn't pregnant. I wandered to a lonely little factory that was near a Waffle House, I searched around for food, gave up and climbed in another dumpster before it got dark and I was on the streets. I had no idea there were cameras around and a security guard. He came out with his flashlight and asked if I needed help, if there was anyone to call. I had no person, no one. He brought me into the building, fed me, gave me something to put on. I told him everything. His father was a police officer, which he also later became. His name was Tommy. He found my biological father and made contact and told him I needed a place to stay. I didn't know that my new start would be more hell than I had endured yet in an already horrific life.

I was blamed for telling the truth. I was made to feel like the bad person. No one took my side. I was all alone with my pain. I was abused for being abused. My friend, sitting on what was death row, they took her off a year or so ago, but she is still in prison, her name is Melissa. She sits in prison now. I have never made contact. When I told my mom everything, she refused to believe me. This appalled Melissa when we were young. At least her mother believed her. Though her mother STAYED with the man until leaving, (didn't turn him into the police) but moved her daughter out into a house to protect her. This was why I came to be her roommate in high school. She loved her mother and believed her mother did the best for her. Then, she stabbed her and her own child to death. These thoughts don't escape my memory, it is all so entwined, it is a jungle of danger. 

I know what death smells like, unfortunately. When I started first smelling it, I thought there was a dead mouse or little bird my cats had killed and brought in. The smell was so strong, that when my boyfriend said he didn't smell anything, I seriously thought I was being gaslit. Not being believed is a hot button issue for me. I have no reason to lie. Why? Because there is no reason to even tell the truth. People don't hear you, they hear their reality. This was the programming that I was receiving. I didn't matter, people were evil and ignorant and nothing mattered. Rage started creeping up. This internal evil I have tried so hard to deny, ignore, magical think away. It keeps returning. And it returns typically being summed up in this sentence: Shut the fuck up, you don't know shit from shit, so get out of my fucking face. I fucking smell something and I won't be goddamned dismissed or gaslit or told I am the crazy one. 

My "over sensitivities" are an entirely different story. They have served me as truth more than any motherfucker on this planet. I kept smelling this death smell. Now, it was a question of this being a premonition? I had smelled dirt and death before, but not like this. This would mean lots of bodies. That is how bad this was. I couldn't sleep with my CPAP on. I was in the car, driving in the country and I tasted it. Fuck. This is my tooth. Click, click, click, dots connected. Fuck, I don't need this now. It explained a lot. I gotta deal with it. Problem is, I am struggling for the energy to deal with it. I have needed to deal with this since Covid. My ever turning tornado of chaos was just making it difficult to steady anything around me. I needed help. I need help. 

This had become an issue with me blowing up at my boyfriend, assuming he would do things once he saw me sick and things piling up. I don't ask for help, not because I think I am so strong, but because asking for help in the past has come with hefty price tags. I have been in an unhealthy state, pulling in unhealthy relationship after relationship, getting burned over and over. I didn't want to be a victim, there was never help when I needed it, so all this became programming in my mind that has been hard to work with. The anger issues need some focus because they aren't magically disappearing whilst in the fantasy land of healing. Because we know what the fuck that means, nah, we don't.

The biting sarcasm that is so hurtful, I have pulled deep within me. I unleash in moments when I can scream. I can scream at all hypocrisy, stupidity and ignorance of us humans. Thinking we know all the shit, yet hate each other. I don't want to appear like the angry asshole I feel creeping up to point out the goddamn obvious. Do you need your ass wiped today? Do you need me to google google for you and send the link? I smile, try to be kind, be of good service, and strap down the rage. I don't like these feelings, which is why I have worked so hard to control them. I don't think the key here is trying to control them, or sit around with them like I am roasting marshmallows over a fucking campfire. They are directions of wind. It is not addressing all the people who hurt me by allowing them in my life still. And now, in the moment I feel injury, I have been magically thinking it away, instead of realizing this is pain because someone else is hurting me. I am not taking the blame for you poking me. 

I am responsible for my anger, but I think it is time for those who invoke it, to be aware of it also. I am taking on all the burden and pain to satiate a contemptuous fucker. That is self harm. I have been programmed that self harm is better than harming others. Suffering, an indoctrination into suffering because "forgive them, they do not know what they do." Yes the fuck they do. I will be accountable for my part, but don't stick me with a burning needle, and expect me to save your feelings of pretending you don't know your hurting me with a burning needle. I will suffer because you shouldn't be told not to stick a hot needle in someone. This makes no fucking sense. And I am angry.