I’ve had a long and complex relationship with anger. It was a creature I battled when I was young, a presence I was aware of as I grew, and a facet of me that I focused on understanding into adulthood. But I have been so focused on knowing and managing my anger for so long, and have so thoroughly learned to distance myself from it, that somewhere along the way I stopped recognising its emergence or existence at all. Which is kind of a terrifying thought, because surely anger serves a purpose? At its most powerful, expressing it is cathartic and may even be healing, should the recipient of the force of it understand or welcome it. At its worst, it can get messy, which was the spectre that goaded me to continue on the path of distancing myself from anger for so long. Being mindful, owning my emotions and zooming out to get perspective always felt like the positive, wholesome things to do. But I find myself wondering if that is healthy or even right. What if anger is the thing you need to traverse to find some clarity, or truth, or answer? What if anger is the best way to express your perspective? What if anger helps you meet someone, in courage, on some distant, desolate branch? What if anger sets you free?
This relationship with anger – truly, a fear of it and what it can bring forth – must not be serving me. For all my circumspect, for all my gentle prodding, for all my mindful curiosity, I have lost my sensitivity to anger, to what it feels like, what that brewing inside me means. It has been replaced by cold detachment, and an inability to articulate the ebb and flow of feeling – a concept so absolutely foreign to me that this realisation hit me like a wave. I know feeling. So, not feeling means not me. Which means I must find a way back to anger, a way to recognise it, feel it, observe it, express it, dig into it, ride it, emerge from it. I want to navigate through that craggy terrain, because I think there’s freedom, glinting there, on the other side of anger’s expanse.