DAY 7 - Friend (21 DAYS OF RAGE)

This is the 7th instalment of a 21 day writing series about maternal rage and anger.

I was in a minibus in the early hours of the morning on the way back from a nightclub in London. I was looking at the hands of the man next to me, which were the most perfect hands I’d ever seen. In the days after I kept thinking about the hands and the man and when I tried to sleep at night, I kept thinking, uh-oh. This feels like trouble.

We were in our early twenties and he was too beautiful and adventurous for me to feel comfortable. During our short relationship he talked a lot about his upcoming travels and all and the things he was going to do, and I busied myself with the art of aversion, trying not to focus on his enthusiasm for what was coming next for him and how it showed no sign of involving me.

I also tried not to think about how we seemed to fundamentally like doing different things, how he was drawn to out and more and I was drawn to in and less. How I felt when I was with him seemed to ellipse all of it and my heart rattled constantly in my chest, willing a future to happen.

One night in the summer, at the friend of a friend who had a swimming pool, I stripped down to my underwear and jumped in. It was something I would never normally have done. I was acting out a role that I hoped would be enough to land me the part and even in the moment it felt phony and embarrassing. I hadn’t even convinced myself.

After he’d left to work abroad and the months went by, when it became clear even to me, chief editor, that this wasn’t happening, I continued to feel embarrassed at how I’d dare to hope, how I’d acted, how I’d waited, how much I loved him and how relatively indifferent he was to me. I felt ashamed for feeling a lot and, as the months turned into years, for feeling it for so long. 

And I felt that my way - my self - was inferior. He was out doing stuff, actually living. I was working in a horribly tedious job and living with my parents after university. I was an anxious homebody. I was scared. I didn’t know where I was going.

In the effort to secure something I had abandoned myself, the person I really was. Maybe it took so long to “get over” because the loss also entailed a version of myself that was not true. In order to go forward I had to accept myself for who I was and know that was ok. 

There are parts of ourselves we are in constant relationship with, particularly the parts that are more acceptable to us. Maybe we perceive ourselves as energetic or funny or smart or friendly or productive or healthy. There are so many parts we bury or don’t want to think about or wish were not there. What I think I am coming to understand about anger and rage is that they emerge as a shock and abhorrence because we do not have dialogue with them or with the foundations or conditions that allow them to root and grow. 

Perhaps we also need to allow for the fact that, as well as being funny and smart and hard-working, we are lazy and selfish and angry and controlling and fucking boring, sometimes. I am not exactly sure how I create a dialogue with all the less shiny parts of myself, except that sometimes a question emerges, like could you love so hard and much without blowing up sometimes? Except that this writing series is a start. Except that it feels like I have to, that there is something vital here, something urgent too.