Anger

Dear Anger,

  Hello. It's me.  Nice to meet you.  No, not really. It's not nice to meet you. We don't know each other very well but I'm starting to get acquainted with you and I'm very uncomfortable. You are overwhelming to me, foreign. Scary, to be exact.  These days, I find myself meeting you every night as I lay awake in bed, unable to sleep. I replay scenarios from my relationship and start to feel all of the things I didn't feel before.  Big, hot teardrops erupt from my eyes, like lava from a volcano rolling, tumbling, speeding their way down my face, burning as I feel more and more indignant about all the wrongs that he has done me.  I feel indignant. I feel hot. I breathe heavily, and I catch myself clenching my teeth. I never felt this way before when I was with him.  Is this what I should have experienced before? Is this what people meant when they said, "Where is your healthy anger?" each time I caught him cheating?

  I feel used. Used and abused. Discarded. Re-used. Discarded again.  At his convenience, I was at his whim for anything: a car ride, my heater, my bed, my couch, my patio, my spellcheck abilities... Given his international status here, I was also his cultural broker, teaching him the ways of our country, the culture of our country, educating him about the social norms, routines, and activities that we experience here on a day-to-day level.  I showed him what it was like to eat at different restaurants in town -- good ones too, I might add.  I drove him to places beyond his typical 5 mile radius between home and work.  I cooked for him. Cleaned for him. Gave up my own hobbies to accommodate to him because he hates watching TV and would insult me (and my culture and my people) to criticize how much we didn't appreciate the outdoors.  I showed him as much of my world as I can and tried to open his eyes to living a life outside of work and sleep.  In turn, he offered insults and condescension about my way of living, and would often expand it to the "people in my country" and the "people in my culture."

Did I feel angry at those times? Heck yeah. And we would often fight about it.  But I was fighting for what felt like social advocacy and I believed I was standing up against him to challenge his ignorance.  I wasn't necessarily angry for me.  I did know then, that he was a terrible fit for me, that his values are completely the opposite of mine. I knew I couldn't respect him and his outward disdain for others different from him. I couldn't stand his inability to tolerate new things and his lack of social etiquette to simply co-exist with the new.

Even as I write this, I feel anger now.  Anger that I could have suppressed before, because if I did feel anger, I would have to leave.  Actually, he would have had to leave.  If I had felt the anger as strongly as I do now, then I would have had to leave him, altogether.  But I wasn't there yet. Not emotionally, so I couldn't leave.  And if I can't leave, then I have to live under a false pretense of accepting him for who he is, and not being angry.  I chose pity.  I chose to pity him instead, and to take on the charitable work of opening his eyes to multiculturalism and diversity.   I treated him like I would a volunteer project and I became a helper.  If you are assisting someone weaker than you, there is no possible way to be mad, is there? Or impatient?  I drew from the deepest parts of me to have compassion instead.

Oh, the denial I've been in!  THAT is what I'm familiar with.