On Anger

I despise being angry. I hate the way my stomach churns and my eyes prick with unshed tears. I hate the callous way my brain puts together deadly insults and hurls them without hesitation, without considering the consequences. I hate the screaming, the hasty decisions, the thirst for vengeance. I hate the way anger uses love as a weapon of blunt force, causing pain and destroying that love in the process.

I have for years swallowed my anger because I hated the person it made me. And yet, tonight, I find myself longing for the anger that has sustained me over the past months. Anger gives you strength and purpose. It doesn't hurt. At least, it doesn't have the same hollow knife's edge pain that accompanies the sorrow and grief that is all that is left of a love once vibrant and strong.

In my anger, the years that I've spent loving that lost heart that used to beat with mine seemed inconsequential. When anger was my companion, I didn't mourn all the soft, gray mornings I awoke to find my arms full of my lover and my brain full of the warm, sweet scent of the curve of her neck. My anger reminded me of all the tiny annoyances, all the larger slights, and ignored the beautiful, breathless moments that made up our life together.

Tonight, my heart is wrapped in silver grief. This grief is softer and deeper than my previous grief. This is the grief of acceptance. The grief that looks back at the past from an impassable distance. This is grief accompanied by gratitude for the moments that still burn so brightly in my mind. This is grief tempered by the knowledge that I am closer to the woman I want to be because I once loved and was loved so completely. This is grief wrapped in sorrow for the pain I have caused my once beloved, for the pain she has caused herself. This is grief wrapped in forgiveness for the pain she has caused me.

Life moves on, as it ever has.