Still Angry

There is a lot to be angry about.  A mental health system that is so broken that it rarely helps people recover and at best helps people maintain 'stability' instead of pushing people to be their fullest selves regardless of diagnosis.  A healthcare system that is still broken; that puts profits before people and doctors are unable to spend quality time with patients, often missing critical details that could mean life or death.  A pervading racism that is rarely acknowledged or often vehemently denied.  Rape culture persists; making the victims 'suspect' while perpetrators are given standing ovations. And these are just a few things that make my blood boil, that make me want to scream, hide or run away.  They are things that seem so large that it is easy to throw in the towel and just say it is all too much to even think about.

Personally, I re-cycle through my anger at myself for things I have done that hurt people.  I continually spiral through my anger at others who have hurt me.  Sometimes I think I have found something like 'forgiveness', only to have that old anger hit me again with surprising force.  The events in my life that caused the most trauma stick with me; the feelings don't just go away. Not surprisingly, one of the feelings that comes with all of these traumas is anger. It is a part of my being that I can't seem to erase by either 'healthy' or 'unhealthy' means.  The dream of lasting forgiveness, towards myself, towards others, seems out of reach much of the time.

Our culture has a strange relationship with anger.  Much of our self-help psychology professes avoiding and getting rid of anger.  In the Big Book of Alcoholic's Anonymous, Bill W. says 'If we were to live. We had to be free of anger'.  This is just one example of many similar sentiments that have popped up in the past century as 'pop psychology' has gained a foothold in our culture.  It is hard to escape hearing statements like 'let it go', 'it is what it is' and 'forgive and forget'.  My experience says that much of the time these statements are said when the 'listener' feels uncomfortable with a feeling being expressed to them.  It seems we have a deep and abiding discomfort with the sharing of almost any emotion; especially anger.

I wonder at the root of all this avoidance of feeling.  Could it be that we are taught to deny our feelings so that we can be more subservient in a culture that is far from just?  Could it be that the teachings on suppression of anger have taken away our revolutionary thought and instead, promoted endless navel gazing?  Could the diagnosis of almost any extreme emotion as an 'illness' cause suppression and despair?  Could this avoidance of feeling actually create violence and hopelessness by making us so terrified of our emotions that we don't know how to cope except to turn it against ourselves or others? 

Our rapid media cycle gives us a plethora of issues to be angry about for brief time periods until the next issue.  Sometimes, this anger comes out in comments on social media and even attacks against other people.  It's easy to hide behind a computer and spout out hurtful anger when you don't have to face any consequence of it.  What if we could learn to transform our anger into real social change instead of easy reactionary anger that does not help anyone?

In order to do this we need to be willing to be uncomfortable and open our hearts to other views, even when they make us angry.  Anger seems like a healthy response to an often unjust world.  If we can learn to speak out, utilizing our feelings as fuel, we can open people's hearts, helping them see things in ways that they hadn't before.  Beyond speaking out about the things that make us angry, we also need to act to change this world that sometimes hurts our hearts so very much.

I am a strong believer in the quote 'if you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention'.  I am often guilty of seething in my anger, letting it take up my time and energy towards no useful end.   As I grow older, I learn that I want to use my anger as fuel; fuel to write about the things that anger me and educate people to facilitate real change.  I want to use my anger to soften my heart. Sometimes all I can do is feel without judging or trying to extinguish it.  When, I have the courage to feel, I can turn my anger into something productive.  We all need to have that courage, to open our hearts, feel, and most importantly, move to change the many things that are unacceptable in this world. 

At War With My Body

For at least 30 years, I have been at war with my body.  This body that has birthed 2 children and survived years and years of self destructive behavior has stalwartly endured my attempts to kill it off, my disdain, and my attempts to dissociate from it.

When did it start? This deep disdain?  I vividly remember seeing a picture of my brother and I taken when I was in my early teens.  I thought I looked horrible.  Within a few years, my war started in earnest with starvation and eventually, bulimia.  I was a shy, awkward, smart teen who never had a boyfriend or a girlfriend; never asked on a date, never asked to a dance.  I thought that there was something deeply flawed about who I was.  Somehow I bought into the societal ideals that said that I was nothing without a romantic relationship; that there was something very wrong with me.

At 16, my depression grew deeper with trauma in my life and I almost completely stopped eating.  This led to an obsession with food and my body that lasted several years and almost ended in death.  As I grew thinner, I remember several people commenting on how good I looked.  In my sick mind, I assumed that meant the thinner I was, the better I was.  Soon, the thinness was not very attractive; I was skeletal.  At my lowest point I was 5'5",78 lbs and probably close to death.  It took years to recover. Somehow a yearning to live kicked in and my obsession with food and my body gave way to a grudging acceptance that I needed to eat; but very little acceptance of my body.

As I recovered from my eating disorder, I experienced rape and later, domestic violence all in a period of about one year.  During the rape, I remember that a large part of it was spent completely dissociated and outside of my body.  When I experienced violence against me, I experienced a similar dissociation.  The year I was pregnant, I remember walking around in a fog, completely numb to the pain I was in.  This period started a lifelong struggle with cutting.  I did not know how to express my feelings or ask for help, so turned against my body, yet again, by cutting it.  In some ways, it grounded me back in my body by allowing me to experience my deep pain in a physical way.  Perhaps it was a way to return to my body, a way that no-one understood and many were completely baffled and disgusted by.  I did not have the tools to cope with my pain at being violated sexually and physically so I reverted to self destruction.

The external violence against my body amplified my self destruction and detachment, but the deep dislike of my body started well before the violence.  I can't help but wonder how this body hatred settled into my bones, my life, so very easily.  My mom recently told me that one of  my grandma's would not go to her church because she was ashamed of her ankles.  I know my mom and my other grandma were no fans of their bodies either.  As women, maybe we were taught in subtle and not so subtle ways, that we were our bodies and when our bodies did not fit with societal ideals, we turned against them rendering ourselves disconnected from them.  In some ways, perhaps, disconnection was almost a form of rebellion; taking our much maligned and sometimes desired bodies out of the equation taught us to build up other parts of ourselves, beyond our bodies. If we felt we could not own and love our own bodies, we could at least cultivate and love our minds, hearts, and souls.  Sadly, this rebellion kept us from having a full human experience.

Reconnecting with swimming this past year has helped me reconnect with and love my body, at least a little bit.  The water is one place I can feel calm and strong inside my body beyond the limitations of daily chronic pain.  My youngest feels this body connection and calm while dancing.  But, if we did not have our physical capacity to do those things we love, I would hope that connection and peace would remain beyond what our bodies could 'do' and stay with us, deep in our bones no matter what our limitations.  Our bodies are part of our expression of our life here on earth and good or bad, disconnection from them seems both sad and painful. If I could teach my girls one thing, it would be this: we need to ignore the messages we have learned and embrace this human experience in our body with all of its limitations and imperfections.

As I age, I still feel the inward judgment that comes from societal ideals of beauty and attractiveness. In the past 10 years, I have become a larger person, weighing twice as much as I did when I was 16. I still don't like to look at myself in a mirror, especially naked. I have never felt attractive and  still sometimes treat my body like an unwelcome stranger.  My war with my body continues at times and it is difficult to avoid detachment and be 'in' my body with all its messy feelings and imperfections.

As I enter 'middle age' and the second half of my life, I no longer want to be at war with  my body.  I want to love it, in all its imperfections and limitations appreciating what it has done for me and its amazing capacity to survive in spite of my attempts to harm it and kill it.  I want to embrace all the sensations that come with being in a human body, the pleasure and the pain.  Finally, I want to nourish this body, learning to take care of and be 'in' it, instead of constantly warring against it. I want these things for my girls and for all who are at war with their bodies, may we find peace and finally love these bodies we were born with, beyond societal messages and beyond the pain that others have inflicted on them.  May we end the war and truly experience all of who we are.