Chapter 3: Anger

Sept. 16th, 2018

Today, we’re going to another place that’s fairly dark. But Darian, you’re sick, your mind could be gone in a few years. You have a right to be angry. You say that, but do you really mean that? I don’t think you do for the simple reason I don’t think a lot of people have ever been angry. True anger is dark bloody emotion that most people won’t admit to feeling. I do. Even if they admit to feeling it to themselves they won’t explore it or share it with others. Part of my growing process was learning to accept that I am capable of, not just in theory, but in actuality of the most horrific things that any human that has ever lived has done. I am also capable of the good. Every bit of it from child cannibalism to saving the whales is part of being human. I am human.

My wife works. One morning this last week as I was driving her to work I saw an old couple sitting on their porch the next block over. All I could think and feel was I HATE YOU! I didn’t know those people. I had never seen them before that moment, but I hated them with every fiber of my being because they were old and I’m not going to be. If I could have killed them and gotten away with it I would have. Instead, I finished taking my wife to work and thought about how much I hated them.

Then I thought about how much I dislike people in their twenties. All the years that most of them have left and the shit they get to do. Oh Well, that’s all you can say. The anger I talked about a moment ago is only one type of anger I feel. I get pissed when store clerks hurry up and end a conversation because they think I’m retarded when my Aphasia acts up. What’s funny is at the rate it’s going in a year or three unless something happens they won’t be wrong.

Then there’s the slow burn anger that I feel at my body for betraying me that sometimes flares into a rage when I can’t remember a word or think of how to form a logical approach to a situation. I once audited a course in Mathematical Logic from Stanford without having any of the prerequisites and passed the course work. I passed by the skin of my teeth, but I passed. I find the inability to use logic especially galling.

Anger is a two edged sword. Sometimes I can use it to burn through the fog and focus. Other times, it drives me further into the fog. I never know which is which. I already covered the Hyper-Aggression which I’m medicated for so no need to rehash that.

I get angry at my own psychological/emotional weakness. I was seven the first time I remember a drive by being done on my home. I was nine the first time a knife was put to my throat. Thirteen? The first time a gun was put to my head. I’m used to being in danger. Even now, I’d probably laugh if someone was stupid enough to pull a knife on me even if I’m butt naked. See, I believe this delusion. The delusion is that there is a me separate from my body and that this me has character traits and virtues. Since one of the virtues this me embraces is fortitude in adversity and it has had decades to practices honing this virtues. It is agitated and angered when it fails to measure up.