On Anger

There is no red, only white. We like to associate anger with the color red, because it is easy. The rush of blood to a person's face, a cartoon bull chasing a red cape, and the comparison to fire are all easy because there is passion. Anger is passionate. There is perhaps no more recognizably intense emotion than anger, but that passion can lead to ruin. While red is that color which evokes feelings of anger as it would evoke imagery of blood and gore, white is the truest representation of that hot emotion. Red stars draw awe and fear at their heat, but the hottest and brightest stars shine a blinding and pulsating white.

Such is also true of anger. The human mind can accelerate to astounding speeds, but when fueled by anger, it can speed out of control, turning one's vision to a blinding white light just before flying off the road and into the abyss. Everything fades to white when true anger comes out, leaving your consciousness as a frightened passenger as it finds itself trapped on this highway to hell. Your accelerator is stuck, the vehicle is roaring down the road, and there is little ability for you to turn away from what lies ahead without risking flipping the ride into a tumbling fireball.

With personality disorders, particularly those of Cluster B, anger is a driving force that helps achieve the individual's needs and wants, regardless of how effective it is. In my own experience, anger has been an unhealthy coping mechanism, even since childhood. As stated in my previous piece, most (if not all) of the persons with personality disorders I have met have not led the happiest of lives, usually starting in adolescence and spiraling out of control from there. This cookie-cutter beginning rings all too true of my own life, so call me crazy, but I think see a pattern starting to form here.

My own beginnings were set into motion by a father on a constant alcoholic binge fueled by his own self-destructive disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and a mother who was preoccupied with work by day and suffering from depression and my father's alcoholic rage by night. My own nights, at least those which I remember, were spent trying to drown out smashes and yelling coming from the rest of my house by blaring the volume on my television until my door was inevitably swung open and I was ordered to turn it down. Later, I found music and (more importantly) headphones which I would push into my ears until they ached and turned up the tunes of Blink-182 and Britney Spears until my brain was echoing with those lyrics and nothing else.

When music was not readily available, I could only escape; running to my grandparents' house, the woods behind my own abode, and anywhere else my little legs would carry me. Friends were a great source of comfort, even though I did not talk about my home life with them. Watching their own families, I was horrified to see people talking about each other's lives peacefully, sharing laughs, helping each other through hardships, and probably most horrifying of all...consistency. What was this new world I had walked into? This was not the maddening life I knew, and that is when I began to realize I had been dealt a shit hand.

I grew angry. I was angry at life (which I held as having some meaning or purpose), angry at my father for making my life a living nightmare, angry at my mother for seemingly doing nothing to help me (though I later found out she had been trying all along), and as time passed, I grew angry at every happy person I encountered. Why were my friends all leading these happy lives while I lived in constant misery? Sure, they had their problems from time to time, but their families always supported them and cared for them when they were down, never in an authoritarian way of demanding to know while offering little support in return.

This angry manifested itself in sadistic ways, leaving me yearning to see suffering in the world. Misery loves company, and I wanted to see others in pain such as I was in. I found myself attracted to stories of tragedy in the news, cheering on the villains in horror movies, and while I wanted to hear how people were hurting there was little I offered in return that could be misconstrued as warm or compassionate. Despite this hunger for the pain of others, there was no consolation to myself. I felt no companionship, no happiness, and there was no peace in sight for my still developing mind. I was surrounded by dozens of friends, but was essentially alone.

Above all else, I was angry at myself, constantly. There was anger for not growing from the trauma I experienced in childhood, anger for not being the best at my many endeavors, anger for not being able to keep or develop relationships, and anger for not being dead. While my friends were only ten or twelve, they had still started thinking of ideas of what to become in adulthood. There were wanna-be doctors, wanna-be police officers, and wanna-be beauticians. I, on the other hand, had never considered a future beyond an early death, because it was all I wanted most of all. I was never actively suicidal, always viewing that as something which made me seem like a quitter, and I was already enough of that in my waking life; best not to let that pattern get too metaphysical.

Understand, this anger never manifested itself into a physical sense against anyone. The only person I ever laid hands on was a bully, and that was more of a kick to the throat than use of my hands. Technicalities aside, I viewed such altercations as beneath me. I was not about to become my father, and that alone has probably been the best motivation he ever gave me. My anger was bottled up inside, allowing itself to fester into unchained narcissism and an intense fear of failure and abandonment. Anger still dwells within me, and my ego still yearns for bad things to happen to others. It claws at the back of my skull, wanting to crawl back to where I began, but I cannot let it.

My anger aches and moans and cries out for sustenance through proxy of seeing the pain in others and feeding off of it, but I do not let it. I channel my anger and push myself, instead, to feel pain, but not the kind one would expect of a damaged mind. I find where the pain is trying to escape from, and filter it. I exhaust my reserve of screams, singing until the skin on my face starts to peel back and reveal the inferno underneath. I push myself physically through exercise, riding my bike for tens of miles until my lungs are crawling out of my ribs and my stomach is about to collapse.

Even with these channels for my rage, I still cannot permanently banish these harmful emotions entirely. They will probably always be with me, roaring inside my mind like an abused circus lion who has had enough and wants to tear its "trainers" apart, bathing its face in their blood. I feel molten rage pumping through my veins when I am denied what I feel I am owed, even though deep down, I know I am owed nothing for my suffering. I hold back that anger, unable to channel it in most social settings, swallowing that toxic bomb in my throat, letting it detonate inside of me, and then, I recoil.

Emotion and color flees from my face, my voice grows somber and weak, and I cannot bear the weight of my own skin on my bones. I look for escape from this nuclear winter inside my flesh, but all the exits are cut off, and I am forced to bath in the waste of my weapons until I can either excuse myself from the situation or I accidentally breath noxious flames on some unsuspecting victim. In the heat of it all, I hear a ringing inside my head, I dissociate to escape the world around me, a white fog envelops me as I recluse, and I am, for one very rare instance in my life, at peace.