The Upside of Anger.

 

I stole that title from the movie. I've always loved that movie.  Joan Allen plays her character caustic and brittle. So much pent up anger about their unsuccessful marriage that, when her husband suddenly disappears, she finds it imposible to consider any explanation other than an affair. That his gorgeous, Nordic secretary left at the same time to return to the homeland only confirms the suspected cliche. His body is discovered many months later at the bottom of a well in a wooded section of their property. It's impossible for the viewer not to ask  -- out loud and even many months, or years, later -- what might have happened if she had set her anger aside and gone out looking for him. Or even picked the fight she'd really wanted to have before he'd gone.

I've spent so many years being angry  - often without really knowing why. Sometimes I did know why but had to force it down. My sister thinks of me as a grudge keeper, and perhaps this is true.I think of it less as grudge keeping than of hurts kept to myself. All in the interest of keeping the relationship civil. At least we can keep it civil, if we can't keep it kind.

Of course, anger in occasional doses is a healthy emotion. A reaction -- they say in all my books -- to being taken advantage of. To not feeling valued. Sometimes things happen and suddenly I get that bitterly familiar taste in mouth and I'm not sure what to do with it. Do you chew, spit, or swallow? Break it up into little pieces and push it around the plate or spread it thin over something sweet?

Just once, I want to take the other road. Not the high road. I fantasize about that every once in awhile. What it would be like -- just once -- to tell people what I really think and feel. Civility and my own dysfunction aside. I might say:

--You've raised your children to be a bunch of little assholes.

--This moment is about me, not you.

--You exhaust me and everyone around you with your anxious drama.

--You're sick. You need help for your alcoholism/anorexia/histrionic personality disorder/(insert dysfunction here.) And I don't want to be around you until you deal with it.

--You're spoiled and rude.

The short list.

I imagine that if I ever really did that, people would just stand back and stare. They're used to me being a doormat. And, of course, they love that about me.

Comments

[teent]

Only the wrong people love that about you.

[Marina]

This blog is fascinating and beautiful and I can't wait to read every word. Also I have not heard of this movie, i'm gonna watch it. Your comments here remind me of many times I've been so mad and afraid to express it. Whew I made some bad decisions because of fear! But getting to know you is making my life better because of the help from the herbs (oil sprays) and just because you are incredibly interesting!♥

[Kristen]

I'm laughing. At least saying the truth is more kind and useful then writing people out of your story, like have done. Sometimes they come back in - having had enough time without me around to come to their senses. (I'm smiling as I write that.) It took almost ten years for one friend - whose unkindness made me erase an entire end of the neighborhood. Ten years later, civility preserved all that time, she apologized and freed me from the suspicion that I had actually deserved it, as I deserve all slaps in the face. And things are different now. But come to think of it, I DID say those things - well, not those exact things - in a letter I literally fired off her way. That's me - not face to face - I stun them with bitter rhetoric. The one or two times I ever actually dealt even that directly.

I am not always angry, but there is a strong sub-surface river of it down there. My daughter inherited that - brought it to the surface, and turned it into Joan of Arc's sword. Sometimes she is not a comfortable dinner guest.

But you have found beauty. And maybe that milk-and-honey-that-they-might-know thing works backwards - that you eat the bitter, so that you know the good when you finally have it.

[Missy]

I've made myself start telling the truth about how I feel *to myself* if to nobody else. There are times where it's completely inappropriate to put the truth out there ("I came to this party so you'll encourage your child to be nice to my child, not because I actually like you," doesn't sound particularly nice...

I will no longer lie to myself, though.

Oddly, it seems to help.