Anger.

I got angry at Chelsea for the first time last week, and it was weird.

Let’s start with the obvious: this was a tragic event, and no one is at fault, least of all Chelsea. As my MD friends have said on countless occasions, there was no way any of us could have seen her death coming and nothing anyone (including medical staff) could have done about the clot that killed her. Chelsea had no say in the matter, and is clearly not at fault for what happened.

But that hasn’t stopped me from being angry. Angry at having to raise our daughter without her, angry at having to deal with the herculean logistics associated with dying in America, angry that my life is going to be a lot harder now.

Most of all, I’m angry that Chelsea left me to live the rest of my life without her. She would often say things like, “you’re my person, and I can’t do this without you,” which did a nice job capturing our mutual sentiment of dependence on one another. She was my rock, and I was hers; it didn’t matter what life threw at us, because we had each other, and we could figure out anything together.

“So what the f&$k happened, and why did you leave?” angry Jeff says inside of his own head, trying to express the sense of rage he has at the sh*%#y hand life just dealt him.

The funny thing is, I didn’t feel anger towards Chelsea until last week, a full 7 months since her passing. Maybe it’s in the spirit of ‘you get it when I get it’ that it took this long to articulate into a clear, emotional response. It’s also worth pointing out that, in over two decades of knowing Chelsea, I rarely felt anger towards her (selective amnesia for those early years when we were in our teens and early 20’s). Maybe part of the weirdness of the emotional response is rooted in its novelty: I didn’t feel this way about her when I was alive, so why am I feeling this way now?

Of course, a terrible sense of guilt immediately accompanies my anger, as the intellect kicks in, dope slaps me across the back of the head, and reminds me that this is a tragedy. The reality is, I’m angry at no one in particular, at the seeming randomness of the universe. But it’s like my anger is a virus that needs some sort of host, and in this case, that host was Chelsea.

This isn’t the first time anger has bubbled up, finding some sort of external host. Although, it took a while to work out that the anger was there at all. The initial, positive reaction to this tragedy, this emphasis on gratitude and the immersion in the joy I felt from our life together, was a bit of a misdirect, almost tricking me into thinking the anger wasn’t there. But of course I was angry. I was furious, how could I not be at what had happened? The problem was that, absent some sort of villain to blame, the anger was bubbling below the surface, wandering aimlessly until it found some sort of host on which to latch.

Quick aside, which I hope gives some insight into my relationship with Chelsea: as I was writing the last sentence in the previous paragraph, I realized a few words out that I was headed for a sentence ending in a preposition (‘…some sort of host to latch on to’) which of course is a grammatical no-no. Chelsea’s voice inside of my head told me to stop, but when forced with the awkward alternative (‘host on which to latch’ sounds strange) I started laughing, thinking about a Churchill quote that always used to amuse Chelsea: ‘This is the type of English up with which I will not put.’

Moments like this happen every day, reminding me of Chelsea’s continued influence on both my use of language and my warped sense of humor. This was our relationship, sitting around talking about ideas, telling nerdy jokes like Churchill’s, trying to figure out how we could better communicate with one another. She really was amazing.

Okay, back to being angry…

So the anger is there, even if it presents itself in strange ways. When I was going through counseling, I struggled with how to deal with anger. My counselor would often advise me to sit with my emotions rather than shift away from them. But anger was different: I couldn’t sit with my anger, because I don’t like who I am when I get angry. My family has a history with anger, and the few times in my life where anger has gotten the better of me, I’ve walked away feeling disgusted. For some reason, I can’t just sit with the anger in the way I can sit with pain or sadness. Those emotions can teach me something, but anger is a pathway down a dark road that leads to a loss of control and a person I barely recognize (which, upon reflection, might be an indicator that I need to spend some more time with that anger-just not right now…).

All that being said, it’s probably good to feel some anger right now. It’s a normal response given what happened and probably serves some sort of emotional/psychological purpose. But there’s a tension between feeling what I need to feel and pushing myself to better, which is my way of honoring Chelsea’s memory. And of course, to be at your best you have to create space to feel what you need to feel, so these two impulses (feeling emotion and being better) aren’t necessarily at odds. But with respect to anger, that tension is very real: I feel anger towards Chelsea but I immediately snap back and realize this was never Chelsea’s fault, and that my anger neither brings her back or makes my problems any easier to solve. I won’t be better by being pissed off, end of story.

So that’s the tension with which I’m currently grappling as I try and carve out emotional space to feel what I need to feel while also trying to be better. It’s a very Chelsea sort of thing to do: feeling tension that represents a struggle with the right sorts of questions or issues.

But it’s still weird, even if it’s helpful.