Monday, January 30, 2012

So much ANGER

I’m just SO ANGRY at the moment. Small things that usually wouldn’t really bother me are throwing me into fits of intense irritation, things that would normally piss me off are making me scream with rage, and I don’t even want to think about what will happen if something or someone really tries to annoy me.
That person tapping their foot constantly in the seat behind me? I want to smash my fist into his/her face. The person sitting next to me in this coffee shop who keeps looking at my screen? I want to pour hot coffee over her head. The cab driver who tried to run me over last night? I wanted to chase after him with a baseball bat and smash all the windows in his cab. That obnoxious car alarm that keeps going off under my apartment window? I want to open my window and scream obscenities until it stops. I stomp down the streets hoping that some kind of physical activity will help release some steam, but it doesn’t. I try to put my usual happiness-inducing playlists on my iPod and think of better places, but that doesn’t help either. I try to leave the house and write somewhere else, hoping that I will be more inspired elsewhere than what I normally consider to be the place where I feel the most comfortable. Same problem. Angsty and highly irritable seems to be the top feelings of the month, one that turns me into a raging angry person, something that I am finding really hard to contain. I’m usually such a balanced person; I get angry like anyone else, but it’s usually easy to contain and to get rid of. At the moment I feel like I am on the edge of some kind of imminent explosion. It’s so ridiculous that even spell check telling me that my fragmented phrases are grammatical errors makes me want to throw my laptop against the wall. “That’s the way I write you fucking piece of crap software who is telling me I am wrong!!”.
Relax.
Like it’s THAT easy.
So why am I so angry? I mean there must be some reason for this? I list up all the reasons that could explain the hows and whys. I’m angry that I spent Christmas away from my family. I’m angry that I couldn’t afford to pay for a flight ticket back home to be with my family, especially seeing as my brother just lost his father and could have done with his (angry) big sister around. I’m angry because I am constantly broke and it’s always a struggle to pay the rent and the bills and my credit is in such a bad state right now that I would rather not even think about it. I’m angry because I wake up feeling depressed every day and I know that I don’t feel strong enough to fight it this time. I’m angry because I am not pushing myself hard enough to finish my novel. I’m angry because I miss my family, and England and France, and my friends abroad. I’m angry because all the men I meet either treat me like shit, disappear or just aren’t the right person for me. I’m angry because I’m not 25 anymore, and I’m angry because I’ve not traveled in years and miss it terribly. I’m angry because this world continues to fall apart around us and all we do is watch it happen. I’m angry because there is so much sadness around us and I can’t change it. But most of all I am angry because I can’t be superwoman all the time, and I wish I could.
Maybe I SHOULD just go and punch someone. Maybe it will help.

3 comments:

Dylan Popowicz said...

Welcome to impotence.

I made the realisation late in life that anger, even necessary/good anger, is simply a response made from a position of impotence. What makes the feelings you have (and I have them consistently) even worse, is that when we introspect, we aren't confronted with an intrinsic, inescapable impotence, but an avoidable one (okay, in relation to "saving the world", this isn't true, or changing the past etc.). It doesn't have to be this way, we say. This realisation only seems to make our impotence seem even more impotent, like a negative sucking a void in the void of the negative (apparently the two don't make a positive).

My anger has always been a means to escape my inner lacking, something that can only be solved by myself (which, once again, just makes things even worse, layer upon layer). Unfortunately, when you punch someone, you'll feel better in the sense that you feel power instead of impotence, but in a way that is completely disconnected from what you really want to change. Unfortunately, all we can really do is face the abyss (but heed Nietzsche's warning!) and as Hegel says: tarry with the negative.

[If this makes sense I will be rather surprised.]

Paradox said...

It actually does make sense. Usually I combat it by actually doing something constructive, but that's lacking right now. I think there is something in the air, so many people around me are feeling the same way.
Ugh.

Dylan Popowicz said...

But I'll refer to Bukowski again . . . be patient, wait, go to the horse races until it comes.