Holding Anger in the Up is Down (Patreon)

I’m writing this because I don’t know how to write about movies right now. Since January 6th, my head has just been somewhere else. And I haven’t just been losing hours, but losing entire days. My mind is not my own. I don’t even know what I’m about write. I only know that it will be heavy in parts, so fair warning.

But I can’t write about anything else.

* * *

Don’t worry, this column isn’t going to be about the fascist slide that this country has been going in (and going in for quite some time). For many of us, we’ve watching it like a car crash in slow motion. From the rise of Fox News, to silicon valley’s techno-libertarian shrug at the very notion of moderation, to the way br*itb*rt mobilized disaffected trolls into nazi soldiers for the cause, to the rabid insidiousness of conspiracy and militia revolutionary thought that hasn’t even hit its zenith yet. We’ve been screaming about it for ten years, but especially the last six. Because the reality of this has been so obvious in this dark, all-encompassing way. One made all the more dark by the way so many people “in the real world” would brush off such concerns as impossible poppycock.

These are, of course, the same people who have spent a lot of time shouting “this isn’t America” and keep being shocked by what’s on display. Which is just more staggering disconnect between those who insist they are in “the real America” and their complete lack of understanding of the hyper-radicalization happening online. There’s this foundational example of disconnect I keep thinking about how where that judge told Zoe Quinn “you seem smart, just get off the internet.” Ya know, problem solved! It makes me cackle with cosmic fear. It’s all part of the cartoonishly inept way that so many are ignoring the fascist reality of what’s here and the 70 million people voted for it.

The thing about this inescapable reality is the problem wasn’t “2020,” just as it wasn’t 2019, or 2018, or 2015 or any other year people said was awful and wanted to magically leave behind in the rear view. It’s not the year. It’s never the year. It’s the broken system. It’s the looming threat of global warming. It’s the runaway late stage capitalism. It’s the pandemic shining a light on what’s been broken for a long, long time. And if you’re already surprised about the events of 2021, get ready for 2022, and hoo boy, 2026 will put it to shame… Simply put, this shit is going to be a battle… And I keep thinking about it constantly.

But it’s more that I’m feeling it constantly.

I’ve been talking to so many friends about how everything in the pandemic feels a very particular kind of awful. Forget the mere highs and lows of days, even the notion of routine has evaporated into nothingness. Days exist merely as a space to be filled. The truth is that our consciousness can’t take the pain of such an outrageous vacuum, so it is easier to find activities that detach us from it. Hours of video games? Mindless TV? The more unproductive the better. Anything that allows the feelings of sadness to turn from despair into this constant hum. But the truth is these feelings are familiar to some of us, aren’t they? It’s as if we are now watching so many people get in touch the base notions and rhythms of depression… Well, welcome to the sad malaise of numbness, I guess. And I’m so sorry.

But thanks to everything going on in the world, there’s simultaneously so much paralyzing distraction, too. Everyday, there is something so loaded happening that there is a JUSTIFIABLE world-breaking reason to have a complete inability to focus. Yes, many of us have flirted with the normal bounds of distraction before. But now it’s like I can’t even do the most basic functions. I forget everything all the time. I’m cooking in the kitchen and go to the computer to look up the measurement of one ingredient, I forget what i was doing, then I forget what I was looking up something, then I forget that I got distracted, then I forget why I’m in the room, then I look for another distraction to stem the panic feeling. And it’s happening way way way more than normal (and I won’t even pretend to compare any of this to the emotional onslaught of ADHD, which I know people do and we need to stop doing that). As such, it’s been pretty hard to write. Right now I have 6 unfinished columns all hitting walls. Not just because of the concentration issue, but because of the question behind them: “Why? What’s the point?” And the unfortunate truth is that writing requires that necessary justification for fuel. Even when it’s a job where that you make a daily part of routine, you always need the why. And safe to say it’s so hard to find they why in the middle of a freaking coup.

But the real thing about this last week is that both the nothingness and the distraction have been punctuated by moments of galactic anger. I’m not talking about personal blow ups. Nor am I talking about some thin-skinned frailty. I’m talking cosmic anger. I’m talking about watching the rise of fascism anger. On the 6th, I said this is “angriest I’ve ever been” but the truth is that I’ve already said it four times this year, with George Floyd, increased police violence, and the failings of Covid protections across the board. It’s the constant fallout of society’s systems falling woefully short of basic humanity. And perhaps because I am still in that anger, I want to take a second to focus on it.

Because anger is a weird emotion for me. And maybe for some others, too.

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I often joke that I can always tell that people don’t actually read me when they tell me my (very dumb) twitter account is “smashy” or “hilarious.” It is neither, but playing with that expectation was the initial joke (and a bad one, because as I said, I’m not funny). But a decade ago I’d often go comically out of my way to be nice or reach out to trolls. And I admit that I don’t come at it the same way anymore. Part of that is me confronting my own bullshit and personal reasons for doing so (which I’ll get to in a bit). Part of that is that’s basically impossible to be optimistic nowadays. Part of that is also coming to the understanding about empathy’s real function and that it is often more meaningful and important to connect through sadness and vulnerability and frailty and our mistakes. And then, it’s especially learning that being open and extending an olive branch to someone online has very little to do with whether or not a troll changes their behavior (which led to this piece on the error of the “don't feed the trolls” mantra). But also part of that is coming to understanding of “what anger is” and being okay expressing it. And if I’m being honest, I’m not very good at it (I’m mostly comfortable expressing it toward tech companies). Hell, I’m pretty terrible at it.

But it was even harder getting there.

I’ve actually had trouble getting in touch with my anger since I was a kid. Not to get too biographical, been around an angry person created a deep fear of anger (I suspect there are many people who know this feeling well). Simultaneously, I was around distant people who weren’t dealing with that, which only exacerbates the problem. And simultaneously to both of those things, it’s even harder to deal with when the person who you care about the most in all of it was completely falling apart. On top of that, I had an older person who was literally losing their mind in front of me. Simply put, it resulted in an environment where I never felt like I *could* be angry. Because anger would make the situation worse. I didn’t want to add to the trouble that was overwhelming. Which meant that often while young, I would see anger it would just feel completely paralyzed.

But like all kids attempting to deal budding emotions, I tried to build tools to help. Which mostly means I tried to placate and fix everything, all while pretending like everything is fine with me in order to keep the peace. Like most situations, it breeds some good things. I learned to take care of myself with a kind of resourcefulness and resilience. I learned how to genuinely mediate conflict. I learned how to help people process feelings and try to bring out the better in them. I learned to get real positive feelings from teamwork and inclusion. I learned to feel joy from helping. But I learned all these love languages and tools in order to “get by.” And the truth is that for whatever good they bring, they’re flawed adaptations for a flawed system… Which means I also learned a lot of crappy things in the process.

I learned how NOT to draw boundaries. I learned how NOT to bring up important issues if they would rock the boat. I learned how to be over-sensitive to how people see me and what they think. I learned how NOT to create an organic selfhood that came from own emotions, instead one that reacted to others. I learned to lie about how I was feeling as to not worry others. In turn, in search of validation I learned toxic ways of people pleasing, which often involved lying more in general (which was a modeled behavior). So as an incredibly shy, scared kid, I never learned how to deal healthy way with my fear. Thus, as I grew up, I had to try to invent a person who was not scared and tried to be that person. And it was all a bargain. Because underneath it was this core depression I didn’t understand or have a name for. It was just this numb, dead, and heavy feeling that I was so, so afraid of feeling forever.

We look at these kinds of good / bad systems and call them “limited adaptations,” but sometimes they are outright harmful. And I’m always hesitant to bring “mY ThErApIsT sAyS,” into the conversation, because one does not want to be a walking cliche, but hey, the language of therapy is crucial to so much writing and art and processing. So because it helps to personify things, in therapy, we call that particular harmful adaptation I learned “the shark.” Because it was this ever vigilant manifestation of selfhood that was utterly driven by fear, but completely unable to emotionally connect with that fear and voice those feelings. I was too busy sharking for survival. But that’s no way to go through life. So eventually, it broke me and so many other things. But that breaking was so utterly necessary.

And now, it’s been a process of relearning from the ground up.

* * *

Now, that may seem like a big tangent (because it is), but it felt important to unpack because 1) that emotional system plays a lot into what I’ve been feeling now with the ongoing horror in our nation and 2) fear ties so closely with anger. Hey! It’s almost as if Yoda said something about this once! Fear leads to anger leads to hate leads to yada yada yada. It’s honestly one of those platitudes that is so overwhelmingly true that it feels trite to even invoke it. But it’s not trite. It’s spot on. And just like with fear, I never learned how to deal with anger, either. Which sucks, because just like fear… Anger is always there whether you want it to be or not.

It’s an emotion that inescapably resides in us. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s neutral. And it’s purpose is to help us fight for selfhood and survival (often perceived). Often, it’s just about finding the healthy ways of talking about that anger and expressing it! Physical exercise! Talking about it! Cathartic release! Air punching or something! Ha. I say all this like it’s an easy thing to do. The truth is that anger rarely looks good on anyone. It’s so damn difficult to manage and get in touch with without showing your entire whole ass. As I said, I suck at it. But I suspect most people do?

Because when you don’t connect to it, or don’t give it a voice in some way, it just builds up. It feeds a growing resentment and then comes out anyway. Sometimes in an uncontrollable outburst that we are completely unable to process and never built the tools to manage. But often, it’s not the explosions that tell the deeper story. It’s the daily ways that anger seeps into our pathologies that can be so much more troubling. As the same therapist also says, “anger leaks.” Particularly because the lack of expression of that anger can make so many people feel this perceived powerless. A deep seeded fragility. Thus, we bargain. And sometimes that anger becomes a part of all these various axes to grind or fraught issues with whatever who or what gets under our skin (and how much it is often reflective our own shit). It all becomes more fuel. And when it gets enough fuel, it becomes a state of being. Which brings us to the duality of repressed anger…

Good ole’ unmitigated rage.

And there are so many men in this country, particularly white men, who are out of control with their constant rage. We know this. We know them. And I can’t remember who said it, but it was something “men think women are the emotional ones because they don’t think anger is an emotion.” Which is gender-normative AF, but also telling a story about what we teach. Because it means their anger isn’t an emotional outburst, but something that is always justified and inherent no matter what. I mean, look no further than the toxic horror at the capitol building. Simply calling this “unbalanced anger” feels disrespectful. This is misplaced terror. And again, I know all the reasons for those people’s motivations are so obvious and racist that I have very little interest in giving deep analysis to something that isn’t all that deep (the thing so-called intellectual types constantly fail to understand about fascism is that it’s so fucking simple). But their misplaced anger brings out my anger in turn. Yes, it’s coming the healthier “fight for selfhood” place, but as it sits and bubbles in my stomach, I can’t help, but wish I could do something more meaningful with it.

I try, of course. So much of it right now is funneling into protest (inherently limited in a pandemic), but more education, organizing, acting local, and particularly supporting several folks I know are getting involved with council positions in the DSA. But it doesn’t feel like it’s even scratching the surface. So as it all stews, I realize how much anger is just… sitting in me. Because the truth is that I feel so angry at myself. Not in the way where I’m talking nonsense or letting someone else’s abusive voice dictate the words to myself. It’s honestly just hate with limited adaptations I learned. It’s hate for the shark. It’s hate for who I used to be. Which means its hate for who I am. I carry around mountains of guilt in my life, and rightfully so if I’m being honest, but the thing about this well of self-hate is that it feels like it can go on forever.

But I can’t turn away from it. That’s because this kind of anger is, of course, part of the well of self-examination. And even in the deepest societal situation of “us versus them” and fascism versus basic democracy, it’s actually about the making of a better us. And a boogieman figure like Trump is worthless without us being willing to engage in self-examination in turn. And in that space it becomes easy to replay the worst moments of my life, when I was full of denial, or lying, or disconnect, and then see them mimicked in his outright evil behavior. It unveils my hypocrisy. I mean, it’s not to directly equate our own personal shit with full-blown fascism. That’s clearly not what I’m saying here. It’s more opening up a file on certain emotions and behaviors that play along with the worst that’s on display. It’s about seeing the path of toxicity. It’s about seeing the capacity for toxicity in yourself. And when I do that? I’m rightfully angry with myself. And when it subsides, it also makes me feel like I did when I was a kid: that paralysis where I’m staring into the void of a whirling pool. The state of numb, dead, and heavy I was in all those years before…

And am in now.

It comes full circle because anger and numbness are bosom buddies. For it’s disastrously easy to slide back and forth between them with slothful abandon. But one of the things I’ve learned is that you can use one feeling to find an understanding of the other. Your numbness is just your body trying to protect you. And you can use it as an opportunity to breathe and heal the core feelings. Likewise, your anger can be a moment to remind yourself you are not numb, but very much alive. When mired in depression, these switches can become critical anchors. And for all my expression of self-hate above, I’ve learned so much in the last five years about how much you have to hold space for these feelings of fear and anger. How much you have to honor and accept them. You have to hold them in your hands - and let them be held - especially when it’s feeling like this pulsing, unstable life force. No, it can’t just fall by the wayside. It can’t a victim of the limited adaptations that led you to a flawed selfhood in the first place. It has to be part of your organic new self. Even in the middle of battles with the world’s indifference, or the battles with your worst self, you have to find a way to hold the fear and anger that rests inside…

But it comes with an admission: I don’t know how to hold it all this week…

I don’t know what to do. I’m angry. And I don’t know how to hold anger when up is down. Just as i don’t know how to walk fascist people back when they believe up is down, either. I just don’t know. Which admittedly means there’s no clever thing that pulls this piece all together. I don’t know the ultimate point is or what I’m trying to say to you. I just know that I had to write something about how I was feeling (and don’t worry, I’m gonna get back to movies and helpful distractions next time, as I know it’s what I’m better suited to). All I have is maybes.

Maybe this is a desperate search to find some kind of productive feeling with all that anger. Maybe this is incomprehensible. Maybe I just did a bad job expressing it. Maybe writing it is a release in and of itself. Maybe it’s understanding there didn’t need to be a point and that everything is a work in progress all of the time always and that’s okay. Maybe it’s understanding that he void maybe isn’t something to be feared, but accepted as part of the unknowable greater. Maybe I don’t have to know.

The only reason that I’m sure I wrote it is because somewhere, out there, there’s probably someone who is feeling things that are bit similar.

And maybe we don’t want to be alone in it.

(Please let me know how you’re doing).

<3HULK