Love is anger (sometimes)

I don’t get angry, not really — it’s not my style. I learned that from my father, who taught me certain subtle efficiencies in hiding how you feel. I took that, his temper, and his excruciating kindness: All my father’s best and worst, depending how you look at it.

I remember the first time I got truly angry as an adult: It was the night my girlfriend got mugged. We were two years young and somewhat new to the city. She was going home late, because she was coming from a wake. I still remember opening the door for her and seeing all that blood. She’d been dragged by motorcycle-riding henchmen who couldn’t make off with her bag. Her arm took most of the damage; the skin fell off in places, and she needed stitches, a couple of tetanus shots, and a whole lot of bandages. The extent of the injury kept her out of work for a couple of weeks, as she could barely hold a mouse.

It was a difficult time, and though it wasn’t too apparent to me then, looking back I realized just how angry I was — at these men who made the streets unsafe at night; at a world that kept spinning despite her pain; at the possibility of having lost her, just like that.

Looking back, I was angry at loss the most. Nights thereafter, I kept thinking: What if? What if there had been a gun? Or a knife? What if she had hit her head on the pavement? What if no one heard her scream?

I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there, I wasn’t.

That same month, a friend of ours got shot in a jeepney. It was a hold-up. She was in a coma for a few weeks before finally passing. I saw the news on Facebook. At the time, my girlfriend was still bed-bound and healing; I initially refused to tell her because I didn’t want her to be sad. But then again, when she turned to me, she could read it all over my face, anyway.

“It’s her, isn’t it?”

I was too angry to form words.

My father’s rare fits of anger were like that: Quiet and wordless. As expected, it was my mother who was the more vocal parent, but it was my father’s anger that held more terror: As his silence stretched, so did the trembling in my chest. As a child, I took notes.

These days when we see each other, I try not to be angry, but I am; this world has left me with little choice. The last time I was at home, the President had just picked a fight with the Chief Magistrate, and the death toll from this country’s antidrug campaign had just surpassed the 1,000th mark.

“Ano’ng balita?” he had asked me over the dinner table. He mirrored my wan, exhausted smile that told me he knew the answer to his question.

I was too angry to form words.

These days, I don’t sleep well. I try not to carry my anger home, but sometimes, it crawls into my pockets and demands a seat on our dining table. I try not to honor its presence.

At night, we try to talk about elsethings — anything but the news. We don’t have a TV because it only agitates us, but these days, surfing Facebook has the exact same effect. We try not to, and we try not to, but these days have been harder than usual.

These days, I find myself beyond words, and some nights I feel her struggling to get to me, like she were reaching for me underwater. Most times, her hand is a blur.

But some other nights, that hand is a fist like mine: It shares my seething anger and wraps itself around my wrist, tight: It shouldn’t be like this, it shouldn’t be like this, it shouldn’t.

Some other nights, that hand is a warm weight against my chest.

Some other nights, it is permission to feel.

Some other nights, it’s more than enough.