I'm Allowing Myself to Get Angry About My Chronic Illness

I’m not ready to give up my anger yet. It feels good.

It feels warranted.

It is the one voice I can still hear over all the other noise.

At the moment anger is my coping strategy. I’m not ready to give it up. I don’t know how or even want to know how to start suppressing or coping or forgetting.

 

I need to know I can have the release – anger is a freedom.

All of the hurt and fear and anxiety I try to keep down – eventually it becomes too much and I overflow. I need to know that in that moment, I can release it.

Maybe it is like smoking – having an addiction to anger or the release of anger, in order to feel calm again.

And for those few seconds, when I’m really burning – every part of me is tense and I own the moment. It’s mine and it makes me feel powerful.

Even more than that, it makes me feel like I can breathe deeper into my lungs. I love it.

Afterwards it is almost immediate shame. I find myself rubbing my eyes and face like I’ve almost forgotten what just happened. Like I wasn’t there or I blacked out or it wasn’t even me. Then it sinks in, it was real – I said that, I smashed that, it was me. There’s the shame.

But I settle again. Things are forgiven and forgotten. The shame fades and soon enough I will be burning again.

Anger is my coping method and I don’t want to give it up yet, I don’t want to imagine another way.

Knowing I can feel anger makes everything easier.

I’m allowed anger.

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Thinkstock photo via fraulein_freya.