The Ghost of Anger
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
-unknown (though widely attributed to Buddha, Pema Chödrön and Nelson Mandela)
I have been dripping with anger for the past year. It started as more of a fast and heavy leak, but it has now become a slow, constant drip. I walk around feeling it. I walk around leaving it everywhere.
I’m angry with a ghost.
A year ago next Friday was the last time I saw my ex. I saw him the night before I left for San Francisco to see family. He was in a bad state due to a mental crisis that a loved one was struggling with. He sat on the floor; I sat on the couch. We talked. I knew things had changed. I knew he had pushed me away. I knew I would never get back to the place I was once in with him.
I’m in love with a ghost.
Instead of what should have been fun family time in the Bay area, it was blotted with concern around my ex, his loved one struggling, and my relationship with him. I couldn’t enjoy my time with my nephew, my brother, or my sister-in-law. My emotional state depended on his emotional state (hi, codependency). I felt like he would end things with me at any moment, and that feeling made me grasp even harder. We texted while I was away as usual. He called me once or twice. I just wanted to get back to him.
I became a ghost with him.
When I did get back from San Francisco, he wouldn’t see me. I chalked this up to him coming undone by everything happening around/within him. I made excuses as to why he couldn’t, at the very least, call me. We were supposed to finally see each other, but he texted last minute saying, “Thinking about seeing you almost gives me a panic attack.” He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) explain why. Was he cheating? Was he about to? Was he having a breakdown? I’ll never know. He went away for a weekend, said he needed to think about his feelings for me (and everything), which was news to me. I could have waited to see what he decided about me, but I knew that would deny my own integrity. I knew that doing so would be of great harm to myself. How many times in the past have I waited around for someone to decide about me? Too many to count. I needed to break the pattern. I texted him: “It seems like you need your space, so I’m going to remove myself from the situation.”
He waited two days to text me back. He said he didn’t want to “ghost” me (how could that have even been a possibility with someone you were with for 2.5 years?). He said the relationship was adding to his stress (even though all I ever did was love him). It was over.
The anger that bloomed inside me after that text was almost too much to bear. I’ve found throughout my life that I’m always amazed at how big and strong an emotion can grow inside of me—without water or sunlight. I used to think anger was a useful emotion. I preferred it over sadness. Anger felt like movement, while grief/sadness felt like stagnation. I’m now realizing that anger—the slow burn kind—is just too much love and injustice with nowhere to go. It no longer feels like movement to me. It feels like a deep, heavy sludge I continue to trudge through aimlessly.
I’m angry with the ghost of myself.
It’s hard to be angry at someone you once (still?) loved, but it’s even harder to be angry with yourself. I was mad at his treatment of me, but I was more so mad at what I had been willing to put up with from him. I was mad at myself for staying as long as I did and not forcing the hard conversations. I was mad at myself for loving someone so hard and so deep. He is fortunate to have been loved by me. He is lucky he got to experience that type of love. I know it will forever haunt him, but it will also forever haunt me.
I’m trying to give up the ghost.
I’d like to get out of the sludge. I’d like to alchemize it into something beautiful. I’m trying to let it take its course. I’m tired of it consuming me. I love myself more than I love this anger. I love myself more than I love anyone else.
Anger, like most emotions, will leave when it’s good and ready. I am surrendering to this. I am in awe of how deep my anger can go; how deep my love can go.
I am in awe of the fact that so many of us can continue to live in our bodies which remain as archives to pain, grief, and anger.
There’s joy in there, too. The body remembers. I’ll see it again someday.
🎉 Mood Board for the Week
This tea with a splash of full-fat Oatly and a spoonful of wildflower honey
7 Things I’ve Learned About Abundance - Sarah Faith Gottesdiener
Playing Final Fantasy VI (now available on Switch!) is bringing me back to my youth where I would watch my older brother play
I fear I’m doing better/With no hands to comfort me (this song on repeat)
Want to read: The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption
Mercury is Retrograde and I’m feeling it—are you?
studerer dansk 🇩🇰, studiare l'italiano 🇮🇹, étudier le français 🇫🇷, estudiando español 🇲🇽, and finally opiskelemaan suomea 🇫🇮. Italian & French (to keep up with), Danish for a challenge (and for my late grandmother Elvira), Spanish to speak to my bilingual nephew (and because I should know just know Spanish at this point), and Finnish (because I want to go to Lapland someday and see the Northern Lights).
✨Reminders✨
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