Wrath

"Rage. Rage against the dying of the light." -Dylan Thomas

As a part of the human experience anger has become second only to hate as the "if you display this, you are a bad person" go to judgement. We don't like angry people. And it's completely understandable. Rage is a destructive force. At it's direction terrible things have been wrought.

"Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." -Buddah

The flame metaphor is perhaps the most perfect choice. When angry you describe it as a burning thing. A savage fire that consumes our will as we fight against it. A flame that drives us to the most horrible parts of our nature.

But maybe it's more than that.

"Anybody can become angry- that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - That is not within everybody's power and is not easy." -Aristotle

We would not have to fight so hard against anger if we didn't get something out it. If there was not some evolutionary advantage. I know that I personally have dealt with anger issues for most of my life. I tended towards turning it inward, which may have helped create the way I view rage.

It was never something to just be let go. I always had to understand why I was angry. Not just what had triggered the anger but why I felt that surge of power. That intoxicating surge. I have devoted huge parts of my life to learning to control my anger.

And I think that's the important bit to remember. Control. To control something doesn't mean to wipe it from existence. And if you're thinking that controlling is locking it away in a place where you can't find it, than you have missed the point of it.

Think of it this way. Rage is a beast. A primal creature that resides within you. Imagine a dog. A big terrifying hound that scares you sometimes. Now it seems like the world thinks there are only two options.

One (The "Bad" One): Where you are dragged along for the ride as this creature wildly seeks to destroy everything in it's path and wreaks every petty revenge that crosses its mind. This breeds regrets and is shameful for those that cannot keep control.

Two (The "Good" One): You lock away your anger and learn to calm yourself so that nothing can touch it. You build your cage out of apathy or stress reduction techniques, or simply out of fear of what you may become. But you know that it is not acceptable to let anyone see your beast. The beast is something wrong with you. It is a foul thing that serves no purpose.

But there's other options. It's okay to be angry. Just don't let it rule you. To push it away or completely modify your life as to avoid all things that could anger you is to deny yourself important lessons about life.

Anger is part of life.

It brings a savage and sometimes terrible heat and passion to our lives. Being angry all the time IS destructive. I'll never disagree with that statement. But to look down on someone who is learning to safely and appropriately vent their wrath because they have reason to be angry is counter productive. We can learn to use our anger to work for us instead of destroy us. Disregarding a voice because its angry is a fallacy. I know that many times things said in anger are things the person will immediately regret saying. But sometimes it's the exact right thing to say! Sometimes your anger will give you strength to say what you need to but were far too afraid to.

As I said I have a deep and personal relationship with my rage. I get angry fairly often. In some very real (and sometimes terrifying) ways I enjoy being angry. Getting all riled up and yelling and punching the air is something that I'm pretty sure everyone I know has seen me do at least once.

I'm an angry person. And I'm also prone to truly terrible depressions. Ones that I have seen crush others of my friends and my family. It's probably the great looming specter in all of what I do. That inky, sticky, heavy blackness that halts all motion. That turns great men into fragile and broken things no longer worth of the title "Person". It's perhaps my greatest fear.

When I have come closest to breaking, when the depression weighs so deeply upon me that I can not even scream, when I think for a few moments that death would be a sweet release from all this I reach deep into myself and pull for anything that can help.

And I find my anger.

When hope fails (as it often does), when calm and peace and serenity just push me deeper into the terrible sludge of my own mind, when I hit the bottom...

I find my anger.

That savage hound of flesh and fire. Burning and tearing and screaming into me, "No!" it says. "You're not done. You're not going to back down! You're going to let this flaw in your skull, this fear of your self, you're going to let it control you? Contain you!? You're John fucking Belliston. You have reason to fight! Cause fuck this! This self absorbed bullshit pisses me right off! Fucking change! Fucking move! Go fucking FORWARD!"

My anger has a bit of a potty mouth. But that's okay. Cause when nothing else will motivate me.

I find my anger.