The Triptych: Anger

My face burns, my throat is scratched and uncomfortable. Feeling close to passing out as posterior vitreous detachment begins once again, the stars in the eyes as my whole body shakes with a rage from deep within my very being. Unsure if there is something wrong with me, or that my soul is corrupted by a deeper torment that my mind can fathom, but anger and rage have always been in me, and in me they are strong.

All that circles and echoes through my mind is the last few hours, the unsettled silence that followed the eruption of words and feelings, and the shame, guilt, and self-hatred that followed that. My hand grasps a glass of bourbon, freshly poured in the aftermath of the confrontation, my mouth and tongue crave the contents of the opaque vessel. Why? Experience tells me that it is not the answer and not helpful in times like this. But my anger still smoulders, it's burning not yet done with me for the night, as I sit here and tell you how it makes me feel. The same thought said inside my head, over and over,

“Go, just leave, drive somewhere. Blast some angry tunes, that will help you calm down.”

If only it were that simple, the glass is empty now. A new sensation of burning courses through me, the exquisite burning of 80 proof liquid coating my throat. Telling myself this isn’t the answer does nothing to stop my actions, now in action as if controlled by fate.

POP

The lid comes out again, and soon the glass is returned to its former glory, how it should be in the world. Swirling low with a pour of amber. As my hand reaches for it again, the trigger points leading to the outburst are all too clear in my memory, they could have been avoided. Just listen to me next time, but it’s always the same loop. People talk, they don’t listen, and then people get mad. Not me, there’s no mad with me, it just rockets straight to anger, an anger that teeters on the edge of rage.

Some try to help, but it always ends the same when you hate yourself more than anyone else around you. The anger within is misdirected at others, often those you most care for, and then you find yourself alone and surrounded by your own darkness and despair. For me that’s the pattern, the cycle that is now a constant rhythm for me. The anger takes hold, your vision blurs, and you shake a little, sometimes it makes me feel too hot. As if the air inside has flared up with the flames of rage that run through my body in these times, at some point it will calm. Usually when there’s nothing but the emptiness and me left, then the conversation is given its chance to replay, stopping and pausing, rewinding where needed to remind me how it should never have happened, or even,

“There! That’s the point you should have walked away…”

Thanks for that, not any help to me now is it. The lights are off, everyone has gone to bed, gone to bed in anger which we were always told was a bad thing. Now the thoughts of sudden mishaps in the night, intruders, gas leaks, and all kinds of strange things that logic tells us would never happen, but they will be the thoughts in my mind tonight. How often they occur and how bad may still be decided by me.

“Look, your glass is empty. Should probably refill it again before bed…”