A Continuation: When Anger Is Justified
It has been approximately three months since I last posted about my root issues with anger. I left off with Part 60.
Frankly, I have not had the mental or emotional energy to deal with continuing the story. It completely drained me. I kept writing until I could no longer write about it. Plus, when I could no longer write, I realized I was stumped and could push myself no further. I guess I had a bad case of writer’s block except it was only about one topic.
Nevertheless, I had reached some type of plateau within my emotions and could no longer focus upon my story. I realized there were some issues that I still needed to face. I could not move on until I was ready. So I took to finding other distractions. It had occurred to me that I was angry. I was still angry. I was angry because my family has moved on and willingly (and seemingly) swept all my trauma under the rug … and pretend that even none of our familial trauma even exists.
I do not even see my family now. I am no contact with them, and I have limited contact with my dad. Yet, no one has ever mentioned any of what happened to me or any of the “scandals” that scarred me and made my life hellacious back then. I was a child and then became a teenager navigating through some horrific stuff, and I had to do the bulk of it alone and underneath heavy scrutiny and a lot of lies.
No, I am not waiting for an apology. I do not even expect an apology. The fact is, I am just now realizing how angry I still am that my family has continued to choose to remain blind and toxic. I suppose since I remained quiet about it, they thought it was over without realizing the trauma it has caused me. I honestly do not know what they think, but I have had a long enough hiatus to think about it, and now I am ready to move forward.
I’m Ready Now
After having an encounter with anger in very tangible form, I had a breakthrough. I had been keeping anger at bay only to realize that I was keeping sadness at bay as well.
I had not quite yet dealt with a lifetime of disappointments, but I was barely dealing with the present disappointments of my life. I would simply live life and let things happen as if to watch them in real time but not be a participant.
Throughout my life, I have found it a lot easier to simply dissociate – coast along and pretend I am not here – and allow life to happen to me. By doing so, I could either go through flight, freeze, or fight. If I felt that I had no will to live, I would simply freeze and zone out.
It was not until a normal daily occurrence did I recognize just how much I suppressed my emotions through dissociation. Even though I acknowledged a particular situation that resulted in anger just recently, it was almost as if I was unwilling to deal with the anger when it arose as a result.
For the first time, I was able to see that anger simply alerted me to what I needed to deal with in that moment. The anger itself was a secondary emotion to the true emotion that I would not allow myself to experience. For whatever reason, I internalize my feelings because it was a habit to do so. I have done so all of my life.
In reality, I felt that I did not have the right to express my true feelings nor did I believe I had the right to feel any emotion when I could not control the circumstances of a particular situation. Needless to say, I saw anger for what it was recently, and I realized that I have a deeper issue of sadness and overwhelming grief to resolve. That enough makes me realize I am ready to move forward with the rest of my story dealing with anger.
Coming To Terms With Sadness And Grief
I am now coming to terms with the sadness and grief from the overall disappointments in my life. Retelling the trauma of my past has helped to drudge all of that up, but it has been necessary. It is a release in a way that I have not even experienced from journaling my thoughts about my life. This is more public, and in some ways makes me accountable to being transparent in a way that I have not been before.
So, I am going back to the next part. Hang on for the ride.
My Voice Unchained 