Anger Is An Energy

You know, for as often as I screamed those words along with John Lydon in high school, I never thought too hard about them. Maybe because back then, I wasn’t really angry–I was depressed with a temper, which it took me years to realize is a very different thing. And because I was depressed, I didn’t have much energy at all, angry or otherwise.

These days, I actually feel anger: “a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong.” Mostly about being lied to–by the government, advertisers, the media–but also about being casually (sometimes cruelly) dismissed because I have a vagina, or a fat ass, or both. Those are actual wrongs. Having to show up for school and clean my room occasionally, much as I resented both requirements, were not actually injustices.

Last week, Al and I had a tiff, the details of which are unimportant, because, as always, it boiled down to this:

Al: I am a stubborn jerk!

Me: No, I am a stubborn jerk! Don’t you dare try to be more of a stubborn jerk than I am!

[Hours of silence, followed by mutual apologies and hugging.]

Here’s the interesting part: during those hours of silence, I dealt with the huuuuge piles of laundry–clean and dirty–that were threatening to take over our bedroom. This was a task I’d been putting off for longer than I’d care to admit, because I really only go into the bedroom to sleep or find clothes in the clean pile, and I have an uncanny ability to deny the existence of anything that’s not right in front of my face. Under normal circumstances, I simply cannot get motivated to deal with laundry, beyond ensuring that I have at least one pair of clean undies at any given time, hence hugeness of piles.

Mid-tiff, though, I was sitting around feeling pissed off, and the things that would usually distract me–reading the internets, or a book, or watching TV–didn’t work, because I had an overwhelming urge to do something physical and preferably mindless. Yoga wasn’t happening, since there was no prayer of me calming down, and neither was a walk, since it’s suddenly in the low 30s here again.

So I went after the laundry. I sorted, I folded, I lugged, I organized, all the while going, “Bastard thinks he can be more stubborn than me, well, I’LL SHOW HIM!” in my head. And when I finished wrangling my own huge piles, I went after his, because I just needed to keep at it; conquering laundry was all I wanted to do in the world. (That’s right, I am so angry at you, I’m going to VIOLATE MY FEMINIST PRINCIPLES TO DO YOU A FAVOR! TAKE THAT!)

And it occurred to me while I was doing this that if Al and I didn’t get along so well in general, our apartment would be freakin’ spotless. Because for me, anger really is an energy, of a very particular kind. The kind that gets me off the couch, and makes me get bulldoggy about things I could otherwise ignore indefinitely. Sometimes laundry, sometimes bigotry, sometimes big fat lies, whatever. But anger makes me want to do something–makes me feel physically agitated, as well as mentally–in a way that few other emotions do.

Note to self: remember to pick fights before company comes over.