Anger: The First Sunday in November

This is a transcript of a talk I gave yesterday at Kairos Outside. Namaste' ya'll.

I think the angriest that I have ever been was when my ex-husband told me that he didn’t love me anymore and wanted a divorce. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me…but it did. I was furious with him for lying to me for so long and for giving up on our marriage without giving us a chance to work on it, but I was even angrier at myself for letting it happen. Looking back now, I realize that it was for the best. We were both unhappy and lashing out at each other in unhealthy ways. I really didn’t realize the burden of that anger until I let it go. I had been carrying the weight of anger over the direction my life had taken for years. I didn’t know how to express it, so I attacked everything I loved, including myself. My weight had gone up to over 200 pounds and I just felt irritated all the time. I was not only living with a man that didn’t love me, but I also hated my job. I was a high school teacher, a job that requires one to see the potential and best in students that don’t always make that easy. I had lost that capability. I trusted no one. I felt trapped; I think I would have chewed off my own arm to get away. Even my youngest son, when informed of our separation, was unsurprised and said that he didn’t even think we liked each other. That’s pretty serious when your fifteen year old son knows your marriage isn’t working. I think that awareness is what made him the one child that did not suffer from our dissolution.

But on that November night I fought against the idea that ending my marriage of seventeen years was the way to do it.  I was so devastated and angry that I wanted to die. I had cleared the counter in the kitchen in a desperate swoop of my arm and cut my wrist on a piece of glass. As I watched the blood begin to ooze, I thought about how easy it would be to open that vein even more and let the life drain out of me. I wanted to punish him, but I also wanted to punish myself. How could I have let this happen? I was so ashamed that I didn’t even think that I deserved to live. I screamed, I cried, I hit my head on the ground, and I even tried to lash out at him. I wanted to hurt someone. Someone needed to pay for the hurt and anguish I was feeling, even if that person was me.

For over a year afterwards, I was still blaming myself and punishing myself for the shame I felt over my failed marriage. I started out blaming him for everything, He was distant, emotionally withdrawn, and cruel. He had lied to me, allowed me to feel unworthy, cheated me out of happiness, taken away my stability, and left me unable to cope. He had pulled the rug out from under me and thrown me out to sea without a life preserver. I thought I no longer had a future. He put a wedge between me and my kids, especially my daughter. I felt like I was floating in this sea of not knowing what to do. I felt like a victim… and that was the worst part. As long as I blamed him for doing this to me and myself for allowing it, I could not heal and move on. As soon as I decided to stop, everything got easier and the anger started to go away. I’m not going to say it is gone, but I have stopped trying to hurt myself and stopped trying to get back at him. I realized that all I was doing was hurting myself.

That’s why anger is such poison. I’d like to read you a poem by William Blake.

The Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

The speaker in the poem shows two sides to anger:

“I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.”

Notice the difference: when he lets his anger out, it dies. But, when he feeds it, when he waters it and allows it to grow it becomes a tree that bears poison fruit. In this case, the poison not only kills his friend but makes him a murderer. The speaker here does not yet see the havoc he has caused. He does not mourn the death of his friend but celebrates. We can see what he has become: a murderer. Instead of looking for foes to blame for our anger, we need to look for friends. It is all about forgiveness. That was my problem: I could not forgive. I could not forgive my husband and I certainly could not forgive myself.

Cesar Chavez said, “You are never strong enough that you do not need help.”  When I started to talk about my anger with friends, with family, with a counselor, in my prayers, the poison began to dissipate, to leave me. I began to see my ex-husband as a friend instead of a foe. I no longer wanted him to eat the poison apple and I stopped feeding it to myself as well.

Anger is an emotional response related to one's psychological interpretation of having been threatened. Often it indicates when one's basic boundaries are violated. My boundaries had been violated. In fact, they had been trampled. I felt out of control. Working on my anger helped me to re-establish those boundaries for myself and create the life I want to lead.

I am not going to say it was easy. In fact, it was the most difficult thing that I have ever done. I not only had to look at the anger that I was feeling in the present but also all the anger that had built up over the years. Little by little, as it came out in talks with my friends, in my journal writing, in my meditations, the anger turned to realization that all the people that hurt me were also hurt themselves. Anger begets anger. But love and forgiveness also begets more love and forgiveness.

MLK said:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

We need to shine a light on our anger. It’s scary. I know. It hides in the deepest, darkest recesses of our souls. It is difficult to look at, especially for us women. We are not supposed to get angry. We are supposed to endure, but that endurance can lead to pain for ourselves and those around us. I did not realize how much pain I was causing myself and others with my closely held anger. It was so big and so bad that I thought it was best if I hid it. But when I finally looked at the anger, it was more like a dirty, raggedy child. The part of me that was angry was really more hurt. When I showered that anger with love, it bloomed into a beautiful flower instead of a poison tree.

I will leave you with a quote from Maya Angelou:

“You can't forgive without loving. And I don't mean sentimentality. I don't mean mush. I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'”