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Drawing the Line Between Feeling Mad and Becoming It
The Art of Self-Righteous Anger
Last year around this time, I was ready to rip the paint off my walls. Which walls? All of them. Why paint? Because wallpaper was (and still is, at least as far as I’m aware) out of style. In any case, I was furious.
If you’re familiar with the Fantastic Beasts films by J.K. Rowling, you may remember the Obscurus character — that swirling tornado of dark energy that ravaged everything it touched? Yeah, that was me. The more I tried to control my anger, the more powerful and destructive it became.
My fury had a life of its own, voraciously gaining traction whenever it was stirred, which happened more often than it didn’t. My sense of contempt was slowly becoming subversive to my well-being. It was a heady, tangible thing that became a constant source of company. I could wake it up at will, and with a finger dutifully placed on its pulse, predict with unwavering accuracy the intensity with which it would appear. Never mind the fact that I was the worst kind of mad I could be — I was self-righteously furious. There was no empathy, no seeing the other side, no rationalizing; I’d become so angry it was all-consuming. Any spark of a match would set me off, and I’d spend the rest of my day worked up, venting, and suffering from heartburn. Anger colored…
