i have been thinking about anger. i have been thinking about the way i suck my teeth when i’m holding back on saying something. i have been thinking about the veins in the back of my hands, and how i grit my teeth when i know i’m overreacting. once, in chemistry, my professor said - women are often angry differently. i have been wondering about that.
if i am angry, it is angry like hungry. if i am angry, it is angry like a closed door. three days ago, i sat through a seminar where a woman twice my age complained about how hard it is to find good help these days.
the man folds his legs over the extra chair and looks at me. “diversity hire, huh? how’s that feeling?”
i am trying to make my anger into a honed space, like turning iron from a bee storm. anger can be an effective protector. anger can be not-again and anger can be you-won’t-hurt-anyone. anger wins where sorrow loses. i get out of bed because i am angry how the administration’s policy is effecting my students - i go to sleep shaking, almost-lost-my-job-again, wondering what-the-fuck-i-think-i’m-doing. but i wake up angry.
if i am angry, it is angry like my mother. i hold the butter knife and pull my shoulders up and wash the dishes while he plays video games in my bed. i am angry like nagging. i am angry like: i just gave up and let him keep relaxing - i knew it was my job, both the cleaning and the remembering-to-clean. i am angry like i have been crying in the shower. i am angry like a raised welt. i am angry like - foolish.
the newspaper shakes out onto our kitchen table. she reads me the numbers for the dying and then has to stop because she gets too nauseous at the way everything is spiking. we sit in silence and read the same article - protests demand climate action.
i am angry at myself. i am angry i haven’t figured out how to teach better over zoom. i am angry i haven’t actually finished that project. i am angry that i haven’t worked out in a little while, and that i never got around to reading that book, and that i let any man touch me while laughing as if it was nothing. i am angry for all the ways i have failed and all the ways i am still failing and all the ways i am not-trying-hard-enough. i am angry like i am my own sapphired edge - i am the sluice of everything i wasn’t quite good enough to be, and i am worse. i am angry like my own worst nightmare.
i fold the pamphlet my doctor gives me. “i really recommend physical therapy”, she warns. “it’s just going to get worse, eventually.”
i cannot afford physical therapy. “i’ll look into it,” i promise. i am not going to be back. i cannot afford sickness or chronic pain - so i just deal with it, like navigating the razor of a fact.
i am angry like a bell. i am angry like a stampede, i am angry like a loose tooth. i am angry like a splinter or a burning church. i have been angry so long that i am worried there is nothing left in me but the rage; all-encompassing. i am the angry feminist that ruins the meeting and the angry relative that ruins thanksgiving and the angry bitch who ruins the joke he was making. so what. all this work i do, and the world keeps turning.
anger is a secondary emotion - it springs from another place, another need. it protects and divides and allows our softer sides to slip away tenderly. i tell him how she hurt me and i say - “i think she’s angry because she’s lonely.”
he rubs his jaw. “yeah. but angry people stay lonely.”
it isn’t a beautiful thought. but something in it it feels lovely.
