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I recently started having trouble sleeping. I woke up at 4 am, he said: Relax! You, mad eager maniac! You're ruining tonight and turning tomorrow into a dreamless hell. Why are you still awake, freak?
I asked my friend, with eternal insomnia, V, what she was doing, as she lay in bed.
"I hear some podcast." You said to me. "And I plan not to feel anger towards me."
The word Ira sounded with great force and strangeness the first time. Then I thought: It defines me.
Even saying "anger", feels like something forbidden and makes a coward like me tremble. It is the bravado of the force of a hurricane that sounds so fake on my lips, as a line in a school play or a foreign word repeated phonetically.
Hardly personified anger: a guy without shoulders, with a face so white, and the walk of a penguin. But now I know the anger better, and much better than most people will know. I know that buzzing in the bones, that flash behind the eyes, that desire that consumes everything to annihilate. I know the anger, but I did not do it until this week because my anger is a closed circuit. I reserve it all for myself.
Self-sabotage makes us connoisseurs of anger. It gives us knowledge about this perverse mastery that generates discounts, just as we discount a deserved food made at home since it has not been prepared for us. We think that anger is not about us because our anger is only about us.
Those who stole our self-esteem - we call it our Sorcerers - taught us to feel anger toward ourselves. They made it sound logical.
Knowing that we have admired them, they said: I am furious with you! For being who you are. To be otherwise. I know what's best and I'm furious with you!
You should be, too.
As diligent acolytes that we were, we became beings that pleased people. Cleverly we kneaded that which would be the evidence against us, accumulating more reasons to feel anger. Yes, I received a B on that exam, not an A. No, I should never have loaned Tim my favorite toy. Mmhmm, now that you mention it, I'm lazy, slow and annoying.
Anger leads self-sabotage to another level. Anger is violence.
Now I know this, after talking to V: Anger dominates my internal monologs. Anger touches my perspective. I do not think: It's time to get dressed. I think: What horrible garbage bag will you wear today? I do not think: I liked tea with G. I think: How many stupid, rude, and selfish things did I say to G today? He had to spend two hours with me; Poor G.
They are just words, not sticks and rocks. But words are weapons too.
The outside world does not hear any of this. They misinterpret our low looks as gentle, passive, almost holy, soft. They do not know that we are like Trojan horses with warriors locked inside, criticizing each other and themselves.
To believe that our closed-circuit anger is justified, makes us think that it does not exist. That incessant patter in our ears, that repetitive self-punch in the face: It is our natural state. How could something so constant, so instantaneous, so suitable, be anger?
It is.
We are victims, oppressed by their strength. This fury our witches gave us in the hand and trained us to use, it has turned against us so many times, that we have become silent ... skeletons of what we could be. Our anger hits us against the pavement to the degree that pain already feels like life, to the point where we think our only alternative option is to be invisible.
First, let's understand what is happening. Accept the concept of oneself as an object of violence and recipient of anger. This strange idea might take a while to be delayed. Feel the impacts of anger, inside and out. Is it like being sprayed with acid? Stabbed with forks? ¿
Frozen? Burned? Crushed?
We have to realize that most people do not live like this. They listen to the podcast. They plan.
We have to realize that the violence that has clung to us, has been generated by us. This proves with all perversity that we are very, very strong.
Within us lies an astonishing power that we have deceived and trained to use it against ourselves, to destroy us.
What would happen if we directed that power to another place, like when a fireman directs his hose to put out the fire? What would happen if we turned our anger to what truly deserves it? And what if we transformed it into something else, into another energy, just as powerful?
Let's try this: Keep your anger self-directed for a few seconds - not because you do not feel it at the moment, it will take more time - but as an exercise, like taking off your hearing aids or taking bullets out of a gun.
Do you feel the difference? That soft "let go", when your skin is no longer convulsed with pain? That conciliatory silence, once the cries have subsided?
I just tried this for the first time, yesterday.
Savor that sweet relief, even if you think you do not deserve it.
How much would it cost to make it last for an hour? One day? Always?
I asked my friend, with eternal insomnia, V, what she was doing, as she lay in bed.
"I hear some podcast." You said to me. "And I plan not to feel anger towards me."
The word Ira sounded with great force and strangeness the first time. Then I thought: It defines me.
Even saying "anger", feels like something forbidden and makes a coward like me tremble. It is the bravado of the force of a hurricane that sounds so fake on my lips, as a line in a school play or a foreign word repeated phonetically.
Hardly personified anger: a guy without shoulders, with a face so white, and the walk of a penguin. But now I know the anger better, and much better than most people will know. I know that buzzing in the bones, that flash behind the eyes, that desire that consumes everything to annihilate. I know the anger, but I did not do it until this week because my anger is a closed circuit. I reserve it all for myself.
Self-sabotage makes us connoisseurs of anger. It gives us knowledge about this perverse mastery that generates discounts, just as we discount a deserved food made at home since it has not been prepared for us. We think that anger is not about us because our anger is only about us.
Those who stole our self-esteem - we call it our Sorcerers - taught us to feel anger toward ourselves. They made it sound logical.
Knowing that we have admired them, they said: I am furious with you! For being who you are. To be otherwise. I know what's best and I'm furious with you!
You should be, too.
As diligent acolytes that we were, we became beings that pleased people. Cleverly we kneaded that which would be the evidence against us, accumulating more reasons to feel anger. Yes, I received a B on that exam, not an A. No, I should never have loaned Tim my favorite toy. Mmhmm, now that you mention it, I'm lazy, slow and annoying.
Anger leads self-sabotage to another level. Anger is violence.
Now I know this, after talking to V: Anger dominates my internal monologs. Anger touches my perspective. I do not think: It's time to get dressed. I think: What horrible garbage bag will you wear today? I do not think: I liked tea with G. I think: How many stupid, rude, and selfish things did I say to G today? He had to spend two hours with me; Poor G.
They are just words, not sticks and rocks. But words are weapons too.
The outside world does not hear any of this. They misinterpret our low looks as gentle, passive, almost holy, soft. They do not know that we are like Trojan horses with warriors locked inside, criticizing each other and themselves.
To believe that our closed-circuit anger is justified, makes us think that it does not exist. That incessant patter in our ears, that repetitive self-punch in the face: It is our natural state. How could something so constant, so instantaneous, so suitable, be anger?
It is.
We are victims, oppressed by their strength. This fury our witches gave us in the hand and trained us to use, it has turned against us so many times, that we have become silent ... skeletons of what we could be. Our anger hits us against the pavement to the degree that pain already feels like life, to the point where we think our only alternative option is to be invisible.
First, let's understand what is happening. Accept the concept of oneself as an object of violence and recipient of anger. This strange idea might take a while to be delayed. Feel the impacts of anger, inside and out. Is it like being sprayed with acid? Stabbed with forks? ¿
Frozen? Burned? Crushed?
We have to realize that most people do not live like this. They listen to the podcast. They plan.
We have to realize that the violence that has clung to us, has been generated by us. This proves with all perversity that we are very, very strong.
Within us lies an astonishing power that we have deceived and trained to use it against ourselves, to destroy us.
What would happen if we directed that power to another place, like when a fireman directs his hose to put out the fire? What would happen if we turned our anger to what truly deserves it? And what if we transformed it into something else, into another energy, just as powerful?
Let's try this: Keep your anger self-directed for a few seconds - not because you do not feel it at the moment, it will take more time - but as an exercise, like taking off your hearing aids or taking bullets out of a gun.
Do you feel the difference? That soft "let go", when your skin is no longer convulsed with pain? That conciliatory silence, once the cries have subsided?
I just tried this for the first time, yesterday.
Savor that sweet relief, even if you think you do not deserve it.
How much would it cost to make it last for an hour? One day? Always?
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