Day 17: Anger
I could hear her from my room.
“God damn it guys!”
My roommate had just woken up and stumbled into the kitchen, hungover. A common start to a Saturday in our apartment, where there were three of us. Two guys ages 24 and 25, and a woman, 31. And we didn’t keep the place as clean as she liked.
“How many times am I going to have to clean up this shit? I’m fucking sick of this.”
An extreme extrovert, she didn’t keep her thoughts to herself. If she was happy, sad — or in this case, angry — you always knew. And since my bedroom opened onto the dining room, I could hear her every huff and sigh.
As an extreme introvert, I didn’t dare leave my room on those mornings. I’d lay quietly on my bed pretending to be asleep. If I had to use the bathroom, I held it. Sometimes for an hour or more as she brewed her coffee, made breakfast, or mopped the floor.
It’s not like she was going to beat me up or something. But I was scared. Facing her loud, groggy anger was more than I could bare.
I’ve noticed this in all areas of my life. I’m terrified of other people’s anger. I feel vulnerable and powerless around it. So when it shows up, I either keep quiet or hide.
But even more than other people’s anger, I’m terrified of my own.
Growing up we always used to say my dad was “fuming” when he’d get angry. I could be sitting behind him in the car and know the instant he got angry, just by looking at the back of his head. He didn’t even need to be talking. He kept it in, and wouldn’t never admit to being angry. But I could just tell.
I deal with anger the same way. There is some deep sense of risk I feel about owning and expressing my anger. So I clamp down on it. Often so hard and so quickly that I don’t even know it’s there.
In her book Facing Codependence Pia Mellody describes what she calls the “gifts” of all our different emotions. The gift of anger is that it gives us energy and galvanizes us, helping us take action and make deep changes in our lives.
So while I don’t know exactly why I’m so scared of my anger, I can take a guess.
Not taking heed of my anger — ignoring it, burying it, running away from it — keeps me safe.
If I fully acknowledged my frustrations, I’d have to take action. If I fully owned the anger I feel about where my career has taken me, I’d have to make a change. If I admitted I was angry at my brother, or my parents, or my girlfriend, or my friends, our relationships would have to evolve.
These changes are scary. I might not be ready to handle all of them. And by shying away from my anger, I don’t need to find out.
Anger is a risk, to me, because feeling it exposes me to an even bigger risk: taking responsibility for my own life.
And what if things don’t work out?