Anger is an Energy

In a random case of excellent timing, I read a great essay in the New York Times the other day in which the author, Victor Lodato, described wrestling with anger and shame he experienced related to lockdown fallout. As it happened, I’d spent the better part of last week absolutely tormented by my own rage and its attendendent shame, in particular some events that occurred during lockdown. I wasn’t exactly consoled by Lodato’s observations, but I did feel less alone and his truth allowed me better access to my own.

We’re fast approaching the four year anniversary of that time the world shut down. If I live to be a hundred I don’t think I’ll fully sort the effects of those years when things got really weird and really terrifying. My friend Jon recently commented that he found it odd that we do not have any sort of memorial commemorating our collective grief. This led me to contemplate the absurdity of how, though the experience was something we all shared, it was shared in isolation. 

Unless I’m forgetting some incidents my mind is not ready (might not ever be ready) to remember, I’m going to say that my meanest moments went down during this era. For though I had spent perhaps a decade prior to 2020 consciously working to temper my rather legendary temper—making slow but steady progress—all that hard work went down the shitter starting about eighteen months in. 

Before I illustrate my point in humiliating detail, in fairness to myself let me acknowledge that I am also in possession of legendary kindness. I like this about myself, though the knowledge does nothing to soothe me the times my anger flares and I give in to and act upon the rage that burns through me when I find myself on the receiving end of blatant stupidity or calculated cruelty.

My treacherous and annoying mind journey last week was launched the week before when I lost my shit with my soon-to-be-ex insurance agency. They fucked up super royally last year and were not very nice about their mistake when I voiced my displeasure. When I recently received a piece of correspondence suggesting they had made the identical mistake, all bets were off and I let the head of agency have it. Only later did I understand that, though the correspondence read identically to last year’s, the message held a different meaning, confusion that could have been avoided had the agent given me a heads up about the incoming mail. 

Those details matter less than the spiral they sent me down once my anger was sparked. I was so disappointed to have given into it again that I felt physically ill. This brain-shame stomach-pit combo conjured strong sense memories of other times I’d felt the same way. The sense memories then delivered up a looping montage of two specific incidents during lockdown when I’d grown enraged, could not contain it. 

The first of these occurred in January 2022 as I was preparing to depart Shitville after enduring seven months of nonstop bullying, including death threats. A day or two before I returned to the ranch for good, I was out riding my bicycle when I came upon the woman who had started it all when she planted a flag in my front yard, and who was rumored to be the one who called City Hall on the regular to falsely complain that I was breaking one local ordinance or another. When I encountered her in person—the one and only time this happened—I circled her with my bicycle in ever dwindling revolutions until I was extremely close to her. Though I did not lay a finger upon her, I unleashed my fury with words neither one of us will ever forget, demanding at volume how it felt to be so closed in upon.

In this instance, the relativity of lockdown to my anger wasn’t as overt as in the next example. But lockdown certainly exacerbated the whole neighbors-hating-neighbors vibe of Shitville, as the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers spewed hostility at any of us who dared take such precautions.

A month later, back at the ranch, I again lost it. 

A bride had booked a full weekend. I had ascertained from the two million emails she’d sent me riddled with ridiculous questions that she was going to be super high maintenance. Understanding I was still in a delicate mental place after Shitville, I had three employees on hand to work with her so I wouldn’t have to. Within an hour of her check in my employees informed me she was being abusive. And so, being the boss, it fell to me to try to fix the situation. 

Of course I couldn’t do that. Because the situation was far beyond my control. It was in the twenties that morning and the next day was going to be more of the same. Omicron had recently made its debut, rendering our earlier miracle vaccines far less effective. Between the weather and the new variant it seemed pretty clear the guest list was going to dwindle exponentially. The situation was also obviously out of the bride’s control and so, I suppose needing to feel control over something, she decided that something would be me. 

And so the bitching began. I was two chairs short of the promised number! (Not true.) Also the plumbing had backed up! This was true, but I pointed out the plumber was standing by, waiting for the temperature to ascend past freezing before he could do anything and all would be well in plenty of time for her celebration. I even offered her a free bonus date—she could have her regularly scheduled party and then, in spring, a second celebration for everyone who couldn’t make the first one.

Nothing could calm her.

In my mind movie there we are, once again, facing off in the kitchen, our voices fast rising. I can’t hear a single hysterical word she is shouting at me as I am too busy trying to both defend myself and assuage her concerns, mutually exclusive goals I understand now. But what really pushes me over the brink occurs when this angry woman’s “wedding planner”—a cousin assigned a task for which she seems not qualified for—corners me and, with five little words, tips me into that state no one, least of all myself, wants to find me in.

”You know I’m a lawyer?” she hisses, narrowing her eyes.

The implication is clear. She’s threatening a lawsuit. With this, I am finished with them. I tell them to get off the property or the sheriff will be summoned. I never see them again. Later, when the bride sends a certified letter demanding her security deposit back, I let fly with a riposte in which, among other things, I tell her that when her husband comes to his senses and divorces her, he is welcome to spend some time at the ranch commiserating with me.

Yes. I know. Horribly mean. I told you so. 

So rattled was I by that exchange, by how angry I got, that I immediately closed my wedding business. I honored all remaining reservations. And I have since resumed hosting tiny elopements and the occasional big wedding. But I never could really get back into it, too fearful of having to deal with anymore assholes. That proved wise for my mental health but I never fully recovered from the financial hit.

As I sat in bed for much of last week haunted by these Memories of Meanness, I tried to extend to myself the sort of compassion I find much easier to offer others. I thought about friends who had confessed breathtakingly horrible things they’d done in their youth. I never thought of these confessions as reasons to end our friendship. I recognized easily how we are all, hopefully, greater than the sum of our parts. Still I found it impossible to comfort myself as I had so often comforted others, pointing out we all make mistakes, some of them terrible, and the best we can hope for is to try to do better in the future. 

Perhaps because I am addicted to British detective shows, I decided my next approach should be to dissect these events I cannot go back and undo, searching for clues to reveal the mysteries of my rage. I remembered what Thich Nhat Hanh had to say about dealing with anger—don’t push it away, but hold it in your arms like you would a distressed child. Ask the anger why it’s there, what it wants. In doing so, I revisited a pattern I’d seen before but had forgotten. I found my answer.

In all three examples—insurance agency, Shitville flag planter, wigged out bride—I found myself in situations with people who threatened My Home. Had there been an accident here while my policy had been let to lapse (despite being paid), I could have lost the whole place. In the case of Shitville, I did lose my home because I was not safe in that home, because the bullies made it clear they would never allow me to be safe in that home. And then there was that threat of a lawsuit by the “wedding planner,” the suggestion she would ruin me financially and thus take from me my home. 

I think most of us feel protective of our homes. I think lockdown magnified these feelings for many. Home was the place most of us spent all of our time. There really was no place like home. To have someone threaten one’s sole sanctuary is, at least for me, absolutely crazy making.

My mind, not fully satisfied with this answer, wants to know more. I dig deeper. I find a silver lining not shiny enough to deflect the terrible feelings inside of me, but still, it’s something. It took me many decades to figure out what “home” truly means. The place I grew up in was not a home but a house of horrors. Still, it was all I knew so learning to build something different took a very long time. Over many decades I have put a tremendous amount of work—physical, emotional, psychological—into figuring out and then creating the safest home I could. So that part was good, seeing how I did come to create a true home for myself, perhaps my greatest accomplishment.

Along the way I also figured out what I needed to eliminate to feel safe in my hard won home and, more broadly, safe in general. This is a far more difficult task. There is no way to exist in this world without encountering people who leave us feeling threatened. Worse, given the political climate, it seems like everyone feels threatened by anyone who does not claim a lockstep set of beliefs. The entire world is perpetually on eggshells. Even driving is a nightmare—every time someone cuts in front of me, which happens anytime I am on the road—I am startled into fear brought on by yet another close call. 

Somewhere in all this knotted skein I am trying to untangle is a deep, deep sadness. For I had moved to that small town with the hopes of having fun, being a good neighbor, and living a quiet life. And I had hoped for that bride what I hoped for all brides who marry at the ranch—that she would truly have a day full of joy. I had done my best to make these wishes—for myself and others—true. Instead, I wound up smashed against a wall of my own limitations, the place where I get so freaked out when someone gets up in my grille that I forget to walk away.

Though not one for New Year’s Resolutions, this year I made one big one: to be as kind as I can be. I am examining a possible theory that maybe the reason I felt so fucking awful last week is because I have managed to be more kind than not this year, and that my conscious attempts to be more mindful and less angrily defensive means that when I slipped and flipped on the insurance agent, I felt the backlash more acutely and more swiftly. Very much like falling off the wagon after years of sobriety, the hangover is more severe, the remorse immediate. 

I’m slowly regaining my footing, coaxing myself to focus on a steady-on future rather than succumbing to the agony of a past I cannot change. I’m far more judicious with the company I keep and increasingly more selective with whom I will do business. Not a permanent cure, I’m certain. But, I hope, a plan that will lend itself to a lengthy rage remission. 

What about y’all? How did lockdown change you? Did you get angry? Feel shame? Are you willing to share re: your least savory traits and how you deal with them? 

NOTES:

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Love,

Uncle Spike