Drop Anchor

Being angry is hard for me.

I am good at a few things, but being upset is not one of them.

Many people are adept at channeling their anger into something positive, but I am not one of those people.

But… I still get mad. I get mad at things that I have every reason to be mad at. Once in a blue moon, I even get mad at things I don’t have a reason to be mad at (although I’m never mad for long in those instances). Almost always, I go from being mad at the original injustice to being mad that I’m still mad.

It’s because I can’t do anything with it, y’know? I can be happy, I can be sad, I can be tired – in all of those instances, even if the emotion lingers, there’s something I can do. I can sit in it, I can absorb it, I can transmute it. Perhaps, most importantly, I feel like I can work my way to the end of it.

But anger? Not so much. It doesn’t care that I have things to do, places to go, people to see. It doesn’t care what I need to do, or what danger it can put me in. It demands to fill a space not built for it, and push out every other patron until it has eaten its fill.

Maybe that’s the lesson, though. Maybe the reason it insists on taking up space is because I don’t – at least, probably not as often as I ought to. Maybe it takes my words and my work – my sword and shield – so that I can learn to fight with my fists.

Maybe, if I learn to embrace the anger, I’ll finally be able to put it down.