Eesh, thanks a lot, Randall. What a dick. If I were Stacy, I’d be pretty fucking pissed right now, but then again, I have a pretty short fuse.
Like most of the humans on this planet, I get angry.
Super angry.
Irrationally angry.
Pure madness angry.
It pumps through your veins, slowly taking you over, first invading your mind, and then your body, causing you to tense and clench. Soon enough it’s controlling your every action as you navigate a minefield that you yourself planted. And when it blows, so do you.
Maybe a more apt metaphor: you’re on a boat, headed down a river toward a waterfall, and you refuse to jump to safety. You know exactly where the current is taking you, and yet you still won’t get off the boat. Not can’t – won’t. Maybe you’re like me, and you go as far as chaining yourself to the deck, just to prove your point.
I have yet to come across a point that’s worth falling to your doom.
But somehow, anger is such an overwhelmingly powerful emotion that it rewrites your common sense circuits. We all take countless measures to curb those impulses, be it video games, art, writing, or any other form of escapism we can get our hands on, and yet there comes a time when those measures aren’t enough. And bottling it up just seems to make the anger worse. You ever see a bottle explode from too much pressure? Lots of shrapnel.
What truly baffles me about anger is that no amount of self-awareness seems to help. Actually, being told you’re angry often makes the whole thing worse. It feels like an accusation. So we double down, tighten the chains and gun the engine to secure our course towards destruction, utterly helpless against our anger’s siren call.
And I really wish I was above that, because I know it’s irrational. Not once have I looked back on decisions made in anger and said, “Well, that was a healthy choice.”
I’m not really sure how to close this out. After all, if I had a solution, I would use it myself. How do you decide to not be angry when every fiber of your being wants to be? When you feel justified in your anger and refuse to get off the boat, are you a slave to your basest impulses like Randall? Do you have to go down with the ship?
Or does someone have a pair of bolt cutters I can borrow?