Waking Up Angry
I wake up angry.
It’s a phantom feeling, detached from any specific narrative or event. Maybe I was rage dreaming. I used to do that a lot in the early days of the divorce.
The dogs crowd around the baby gate in the hall, in the pre-dawn light, which is navy blue and water like. We’re not legally awake yet. We bang into each other, like mosh-pit punks.
“Hey,” I snap, in a crisp, sharp tone I know very well. My father’s tone. The one we tiptoed around carefully as kids. The one I swore I’d never use with my own.
Anger, heat, agitation, disconnection.
I feel these strands gathering in me, tying into something bigger and more substantial. An arrow looking for a target. These are difficult feelings. Easier, for me, than sadness. But still, difficult.
Here’s what I’ve noticed: when we try to disown our anger it gets angrier. Anger wants our attention, not our abandonment.
We get caught in the trap of not wanting to make something painful or negative bigger by focusing on it. But there is an ultra delicate difference between shining our attention on something, for the sake of understanding and acknowledging it, vs focusing on it and unintentionally reinforcing it.
It’s our intention that makes the difference.
