I thought I was a nice person, so when my estranged husband continued to refuse me visitation with our child to punish me for leaving, I was amazed that I could feel such depths of anger, resentment, hatred, and overall ill-wish. Emotion possessed me. I shook involuntarily. My breath came in coarse uneven bits, like ripping cloth. My heart pounded. I saw flashes of color.
Eventually I emerged, wondering how in my whole life as myself, I'd never met this terrifying, angry, dangerous person before. I also felt better, stronger, exhausted, and invigorated. Instead of feeling trapped, I was ready to make a plan and move forward. Amazingly, I hadn't moved from the couch, let alone hurt anybody, as I was raised to believe anger forces one to do.
This uncorking was only the beginning. My nice-girl self was soon to be repeatedly shocked at the not-niceness buried inside her. Bottled up anger began to flow from me with ferocious passion. Revealing not a nice woman, but a passionate woman, and maybe a buddingly wise woman.
Once I journeyed with my best friend, Marie, while feeling over-sheltered and suffocated by my always-present upstairs landlords. My journey-self set out on a killing spree that no respectable human with a healthy fear of prison would ever allow herself to think of. At last alone, autonomous, and powerful, amongst only dead neighbors, she relaxed and basked in the sensation of safety. Back in ordinary reality, my generally sane and prison-fearing self reported this alarming mental excursion to Marie. An old-soul, rather than offering me disgust and fear, she told me, "well, this is a very safe place to express those feelings."
I began to allow triggers to take me interesting places. One took me to the bedroom my husband and I shared long ago, provided me with a knife, and allowed me to make myself an imaginary torturess. After mentally sleeping in a sticky, warm, red puddle - finally safe and peaceful, I was surprised when his imaginary spirit appeared to my imaginary murderess. A flood of compassion and forgiveness overtook me. I put him back together again. I woke up. I felt so much better. The next day he very uncharacteristically texted me and we had a remarkably civil exchange.
I felt better. Stable, calm, rational. Not only had my intense and violent emotions of anger, hatred, rage and bitterness not caused anyone harm, they improved my functioning and mental state. Somehow, they also increased my feelings of compassion and desire for my terrorizer's well-being, making me less instead of more dangerous.
I decided to adopt a new strategy with my angry emotions. Instead of running from and disowning them, I made a practice of allowing my rage to sweep through me and humor myself with whatever abhorrent, volatile, cruel, and/or childish fantasies I wished. They flooded in at first, like the ocean after a dam finally buckles under its weight.
Intrigued by my experiences, open-minded old soul that she is, Marie experimented with and eventually adopted my unconventional strategy.
Two years later, Marie works at the local jail. We read an article together from our small-town newspaper. Attempted murder suspect found guilty. We discuss violence. We discuss mental illness. We discuss punishment and the justice system. We discuss how our own violent imaginings have taken on subtle unexpected nuance - sometimes our inner vengeance-seeker is satisfied by petty mischief, sometimes by victimless expressions of injustice, like screaming (and screaming and screaming). How sometimes it requires rash, abrupt violence, and sometimes the infliction of suffering. We discuss how strange it is that, quite opposite to what we've always been told, these fantasies actually seem to serve a protective function. Have we actually desensitized ourselves and become terribly dangerous people?
Marie asserts that she is more soundly grounded in the desire for kindness and compassion than ever. As a person who has dedicated her life thus far to holding he hands and hearts of the dying, ill, and underserved, this is tremendous commitment, indeed.
I realize that my imaginary atrocities have in fact made my real-world compassion and empathy comparatively vast. While it's quite a sizeable leap from imaginary violence and cruelty to the actual doing of atrocities, I've come to understand to some degree the kind of fear, anger, pain, powerlessness, and hopelessness that drives real people to commit real violence. Rather than a monsters, entirely alien from myself, I can only see a people, with a human hearts, beating with the same passions and emotions that as my own. I can't pretend that I'm "better" than them, that my actions would have been any different, if my life had been theirs. How can I not care about their suffering, when it must have been so much worse than what seemed unbearable to me?
So... do you seek a world of love, peace, and compassion? A society where we can truly take others as ourselves? Where we can love the hated, envelop the dispossessed, be our brothers' keepers? Then don't try to eradicate your anger. Let it awaken you, purify you, teach you.
