Anger Management

I have anger issues. This became painfully obvious last night when I woke up at two in the morning from a startling dream. I was in a doctor’s office. A team of doctors in long white coats came in to assess my anger level. Their method was simple: poke, prod and provoke me to my breaking point. Different doctors were assigned different tactics. While one began jabbing me in my nauseous stomach, another was busy with a slide show dissecting my departure from the Mormon church years ago. All the while, a third criticized my play, Rain Falls, worse than the harshest New York Times review could. It worked. I finally leapt from the examination table and vented my deep wrath at the first person to come into view. Trouble is, at the moment it happened to be a loved one who had entered the room unsuspectingly. I woke up, salt tears staining my pillow, the bitter taste of rage in my mouth.

Several days ago, a friend of mine asked if I could pinpoint what I am most angry about. I responded that I was angry to be stuck here in Salt Lake City, a rather brilliant, if not humbling stroke of dramatic irony by the gods. The resentment has felt palpable for some time. If not for chemotherapy, I suspect I’d be moving forward in my career, perhaps traveling again. In a time in my life that felt defined by momentum, I’ve been forced to slow down, almost to a screeching halt, and wait. Wait, while it feels as though the world around me continues rushing forward at that blinding pace I remember matching only a year ago.

It’s a ridiculous thing to be angry with really, a city. In truth, I’m not trapped. There are no chains keeping me tied to the Wasatch Mountains. When I look deeper, I can acknowledge that the feeling of imprisonment has nothing to do with my physical location. It is my physical state.

I wake up each morning in this body. I walk slowly, I lie down, I get up when I can, I exercise only if I have energy. Every second of every day, I am confronted by my limitations. I am so angry that my body can’t do what it could before. I am so angry that my energy is limited, and my strength wanes. I am angry that I can’t climb a mountain I want to, that I can’t visit a place I want to. I am angry that chemotherapy keeps me from many of the things I love most in life, and makes others (like food) feel entirely unsatisfying.

The first step to moving beyond anger is confronting it, right? I woke from my dream realizing there is no one, nothing I can be angry with. My rage, for lack of a better target, is misdirected at the things that are actually helping me heal. I can’t direct it inward either, because my body, in a fragile state, seems to wear both my self love and self hate fairly visibly. So at the end of the day, I sit with my anger, not knowing how to dispel it. I don’t want this anger to fester in me. I don’t want to let it consume me. But until I can admit to myself just how angry I am, how real it is, and how strong a hold it has on me, I can’t begin to let it go.