The Topic Tonight is Anger

With something about cereal, too.

It’s a Friday afternoon. I’m eating delicious Grape-Nuts with oat milk in a New York Jets mug and yes, there are many things to loathe about that statement. I’m gazing out at a very cold lake that ought to be a bit more frozen that it is. I am thinking about anger, because I am angry, but I’m also happy to be alive. Isn’t it interesting to feel such seemingly opposite emotions all at once?

They aren’t really opposites, of course. To be angry is to feel a hot, sizzling vitality coursing through you, and while said vitality may carry a message akin to “hey maybe it’s time to punch a hole in a wall,” it is still vital! You are here, you exist, you are alive and you are FUCKING enraged!

I get angry when I feel a boundary has been violated, or someone has been cruel, or I have neglected to meet the standards I set for myself, or I’m physically uncomfortable, or or or…there are so many reasons to be angry, just as there are so many reasons to be anything at all.

Perhaps depression is the actual opposite of feeling joyfully alive. It’s so passive, so sunk in the stinking mud of doom.

Anger is an active emotion, which I suppose is why many people who are afraid of their pain prefer to bathe in the roiling poison pond of eternal fury. If you’re always mad at somebody, you don’t have to sit with the hurt inside. Getting quiet is scary, though beautiful things grow in the silence.

To acknowledge hurt is to acknowledge vulnerability. It is to say, “I am not impervious to pain.” Even worse, it is to admit that one cares. When they know you care, they can take advantage of you, can’t they? They can take things away from you. Better to lash out than to tend the wound they’ve created.

It is good to move the body when one feels an uncomfortable emotion. It is good even just to stretch. And as I write to you, I’ve paused to put a pot of black-eyed peas on the stove, and even the little movements required there helped me feel a bit saner and more grounded. I am still angry, but the anger is sizing down to something manageable. It always does, I find, if I give it a bit of time - but moving helps.

I’m rather low on groceries, which pisses me off - it’s not why I’m angry, it’s just something I’m annoyed at myself over today. That’s why my late lunch is Grape-Nuts and oat milk. And yet I’m also grateful for Grape-Nuts (say it seventeen times fast), because it is sustenance and because it has the texture of kitty litter while tasting a lot better than I imagine kitty litter tastes.

In fact, I fucking love Grape-Nuts. It’s been around since 1897! My grandfather used to mix it with Cheerios. Wild, disruptive, iconic, and full of fiber! Please put that last sentence, such as it is, on my tombstone.

I wish you a gorgeous weekend. May your emotions flow as easily as you wish. May you get good sleep without having to wake up to pee too often. May you know that I appreciate you, even and especially if it feels like others don’t. Your eyeballs and brain and typing fingers mean I get to be here typing and using my eyeballs and brain.

What a pleasure it is to get to write to you, even when I’m mad. Especially when I’m mad. You are lovely. And even if you aren’t, I believe you’re on your way to some state of loveliness that will please you enormously. It’ll last for awhile, and at some point you’ll feel yourself in the bog troll type of muck in which I am currently stewing. But that, too, is temporary.

May your cereal bowl be full, and may you remember you have Cap’n Crunch stashed in the pantry, exactly when you need it most.

Love,

Sara

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