It is perhaps a blessing that I do not know enough French to storm up to my neighbor’s house and start a fight right now. I am currently sitting on a boiling pot of rage that I would love to tip over their heads. I am sweating, headachy, and have the urge to kick some holes in the wall. My anger often teeters on the edge of sobbing in frustration or kicking holes in the walls. And since I don’t own these walls, I try to nudge myself to the more reasonable frustrated sobbing when possible. That’s not working today.
I was already upset when I woke up. I’ve never understood people who claim to take hours and 3 cups of coffee to wake up because when my eyes open I am surging with consciousness. I’ve been without anxiety meds for over a week now, which is in and of itself a reason to be angry because it’s due to someone else’s irresponsibility, and also the cause of my escalating inability to brush off the issues piling up around me.
Some dude who thinks he’s entitled to my attention and personal life won’t accept being told no. I am more and more uncertain how I’ll pay rent next month. The doctor I see who speaks English has been on vacation for months and I need more asthma meds. The French are currently protesting cinemas being closed instead of protesting the horrific malfeasance of the French government’s failure to vaccinate us so we can open the damn cinemas. Nazis continue to exist.
And then this morning my neighbor’s cat showed up begging for food with a 3 inch bloody wound on its side.
This is not the first time this has happened. Or the second time. Or the third, fourth, or fifth time. Since they moved in months ago, this cat (who I call Bruno Bigballs because he’s not neutered) has been having loud fights with the local strays at 3:00AM because he’s left out all night, stealing all the food I provide for said strays because he’s clearly not being fed elsewhere, and acting so love-starved that he will jump in the air at your hand to get pet and try to force his way into my window.
When I was 14 years old I was put on Zoloft for my “depression and anger issues”. I would scream and cry. I would kick holes in walls. I would break doors. I think my mother perhaps regretted buying me steel-toe boots.
What she should have been regretting was forcing me to live with my abusive father. Okay, I actually know she did regret it, because she sometimes tried to get me to go live somewhere else instead of making him go live somewhere else which I took rather personally and only later in life let it go after understanding how controlled she was by his abuse.
The Zoloft did what they wanted it to. I stopped being angry. I felt nothing about anything. My personality disappeared. And very quickly I knew it was wrong. Because there were things I should have been angry at. I wanted to be able to react when my dad was abusive to my mom. I wanted to stand up for myself. I just couldn’t. The “fuck you, asshole” setting in my brain had been disabled. Imagine being frustrated with the sensation that you can’t get frustrated. It made me so uncomfortable I refused to continue taking the pills after a couple months.
And then I was angry about people trying to drug the angry away. Because the angry was correct. The angry was called for. The angry was justified. It was righteous and holy and deserved respect and reverence.
My mother wanted me drugged because she wanted me to be able to function in a dysfunctional reality. She didn’t understand it was a reality she could have changed. She felt trapped, and thus I was trapped. And drugged.
Anger is a powerful motivator, and those who would do us harm know this. An angry women is a hated woman. Black women in particular have had their anger exploited and used against them when/because they have the most justified anger that could exist.
At 14, I was angry because I knew there was something that could be done if only one person listened to me. Now, I need a lot more people to listen. An unreasonable and unattainable amount of people. I cannot yell loud enough to make men understand “no”. I can’t kick enough holes in walls to get someone to buy me a place to live. I cannot argue my way into getting vaccines to people or punch someone to make them neuter their cat.
So now I sit here anxiously awaiting when I’ll be able to drug away this anger not because I don’t think it’s right, but because it’s only hurting me with no positive side effect of changing the situation. Luckily my current meds do not turn off my ability to feel feelings, they simply take the jagged edges off of the feelings so they can be processed without cutting me up on the way through.
My friends has helped write a polite letter to give to the neighbors in the hopes that they will be reasonable and choose to take care of their cat, and we will be talking to the Mairie (town hall) about what measures have been taken or can be taken with the stray cats in the village. We’re also trying to get responses from animal rescues in the area. The anger I feel can motivate these actions, but being on the brink of starting an international incident because I can’t quell the urge to put on my metaphorical kicking boots probably won’t be the best way to make my neighbors properly care for their cat.
My anger is an important part of me. My reasons for being angry make me who I am. Anger is a reasonable reaction to many of the injustices in the world. I am very protective of it. It is my entitlement. It is my right. It is sometimes the only thing I have. I just have more rage than I can use at the moment, and I don’t have any steel-toe boots.
