october 1 2024

I’m walking to Selena’s for dinner and I’m thinking about the function of anger. 

It is a beautiful day, overcast and grey but warm enough to meander around in a Juicy Couture sweatsuit set with “Sagittarius” bedazzled across my ass. I live a charmed life and I am happy. I have nothing to complain about. And yet, beneath the contentment, I am often simmering and hot.

I used to have anger problems as a teenager - blackouts, lash-outs, fist fighting girl friends at lunchtime, yelling at teachers, breaking things. A cry for help, yes, but I was out of control. 

Then one day, I’m still not sure why, I just reeled it in and swallowed it. I stopped getting mad. Of course, I still get annoyed and irritated and indignant and hostile - people are crazy and I’m not Jesus Christ - but I don’t get angry per se. Not like before. If I feel myself getting close, I leave the situation, the place, the person. I leave a lot.

On Monday, I tell my analyst that I think I have a subconscious belief that anger is akin to drugs, to poison. It is intoxicating and all-consuming and the act of feeling so righteous and annihilative carries a sensual element. There is pleasure in obliterating - white hot, atomic. Creation and destruction are the same coin. No gives way to Yes. Messy.

“Why is that a problem?” she asks me.

“When I say it like that, it’s all intellectual and there’s a million ways around it but it’s not the truth,” I tell her.

“What is the truth?”

The truth is that I like to think I have the discipline of a fucking monk. I can deprive myself of anything at any moment if it will make me more precise, more True. I gave up drugs forever. I gave up drinking, smoking, meat, sex and companionship for years at a time. I don’t drink coffee. I lowkey have a Master’s degree. I quit sugar. I pay my taxes. I have no vices. Except for this goddamn phone. But that too, I can and will conquer. There is nothing that has dominion over my mind. I am aiming for total freedom.

“So where does it go?” she says.

“What?”

“Your anger. Just because you don’t externalize it, doesn’t mean it isn’t still generated. It exists. Where is it?”

I pause for a moment to think.

“My plan is to make 400 billion dollars,” I tell her, in all seriousness.

At night, I lather retinol across my cheeks and stare at myself in the mirror as I brush my teeth.

I have an iron will. My resolve could level nations. I do not get angry. I will not be out of control.