I’m the first to admit I’ve always had an anger problem. My consciousness swirls in rage when I’m awake and it keeps swirling even when I’m asleep. My dreams used to be painted in the colors of a deranged jigsaw puzzle. My first poem was nothing but anger stylized like a Beatnik rant, and my first novel attempt was half nihilism and half resentment. Needless to say, I was rarely a happy camper. Even now there are days when my body feels like it’s the vessel to a volcano building up for an ashy explosion. The source of this anger is practically a cliché. I can very easily trace back its history, and it wasn’t anything that snuck up without warning but was something summoned by my own hand and used to survive my household. It was my protection, my resilience, something I planted with my own hands and nurtured like a bonsai tree.
I will not get into the specifics of the chaos that thrived in the setting of what felt like a Hoarders episode ruled by a disillusioned madman, only that I was drowning in that plague. Nothing could keep me afloat, so I turned to anger, and it kept me alive for years. However, it turns out that I nurtured it a bit too well. The roots grew so deep down into the earth that it’ll take a lifetime to properly dig them out. The greenhouse was built, but the angry vegetation has overgrown the building. It’s impossible to cut them all down, and even if it weren’t, why would I want to? They grew, prospered and cemented their roots just as I wanted them. They did their job.
Trying to ignore it, cover it up in a sheet and hide it away are all or trying to just yank it out are guaranteed paths towards an explosion. Trust me. Hiding it will also only cause it to fester into a fever. This is where therapy usually comes in but that’s not for me. I tried it twice and no, definitely not for me. I already know who I am and what the problem is, which I feel is what therapy is best suited. So, what then, what if you know where the source of your anger, pain or depression comes from? And instead of wanting to talk about it, you want to act on it? What then?
Well, that’s where art comes in. In this case, writing.
Art is an action, a creation that comes from you and everything inside you, including all the negatives. A tailored to you method of healing.
Just last year something happened, and I felt a flare of anger so consuming and dangerous to myself that I couldn’t feel anything else. My entire body was taken over as I paced my house, clenching my fists and was then almost stunned into a cold numbness. Sitting and staring at the wall, so consumed by one thing I was unable to even think about anything else. So, I sat down and started to write. Slowly the anger began to leak out and each day, I had a new story. Eventually, I had an entire collection of shorts, seven in total. Not bad.
Rachel Roth
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