there is a kind of impotent, directionless rage that bubbles up from the feeling of being absolutely disempowered, of being systematically and comprehensively reduced from a human being into an object, or a toy, or a piece of food. it is a rage which is undeniable and which cannot be suppressed without doing immense psychic harm to the self. it arises in many places, at many times, wherever there is the boot of humiliation and subjugation stomping down upon the oppressed, wherever the Father reigns supreme, wherever the Gender Hegemon silences and molests, wherever the Imperialist and his bombs whistle through the night. it is a helpless and powerless fury that demands: why am I not being heard? Why am I not being heard? Why can't you hear me? It is poisonous to be forced to carry this rage. You remember this rage, just I do. it is something that, at the very least, every child experiences, in the midst of the horrifying and despairing realization: I am a person, yes, but no one else sees me this way. the child, who realizes, with sickening dread, that the person before them can do whatever they want to them, and there is nothing that the child can do to resist. and in this world there are people who would wield the power they have with a wicked satisfaction. God takes away my mouth. I cannot cry out. I cannot cry out. I cannot carry this rage forever. It is terrible and poisonous. It carves out everything inside of me, scrapes out my guts and replaces them with a disfiguring and hollow hatred. My insides fall out of me with a thud upon the hardwood floor and inside of the cavity of my body there is only an empty space, a void somehow heavy with burden. this rage is a natural response. it is instinctual, it is involuntary, it is reflexive. it is the part of our insides which knows that we are being hurt. it is a survival mechanism. it is a self-preservation instinct. and yet where does that rage go? what happens to it? what happens to it, after years of sitting there and taking it, after years of trying to fight back and being unable to win? does it invert, dive deeper inside of ourselves, while we attempt to smother it in hopes that we can pretend that this is a tolerable existence? "Oh, no, haha, it's fine, it's just..." We lose the capacity for self-honesty. The rage is authentic, and cannot be destroyed. So in turn we must destroy our capacity to be authentic. It is violent. It is a smashing of the self, a grinding of the soul and the will down into a tiny, quiet facsimile of a person. Small voice. Little baby bird. But the rage stays there, because it cannot be destroyed, because it has nowhere to go. And every once in a while the pressure reaches a breaking point, and once again the skin of our deepest heart begins to tear, to split, and -- it comes again, bubbling up with a fury of furies, rushing to escape us like so much bile and smoke. it is an impossible experience. it's impossible to survive carrying this poisonous rage intact. it fractures and shatters a person. why can't you understand that I am a person? it begets questions almost innocent and charming in their sincere directness. why? why? why won't you love me? why won't you treat me with justice? why won't you see that I am a person? why? why? why? this rage has nowhere to go. what happens to it? what happens to all that rage? it haunts a life. it is like a life haunting itself. deep down, we all know we deserve to be treated fairly, we deserve to be seen as a human being. and yet, there are those who would try break us into a shape smaller than a person. you can only smile and laugh pleasantly and brush off that kind of humiliation and domination for so long. eventually something has to break. and so comes back the rage.
