Processing Anger

Well, in true no-longer-achingly-busy fashion, now that the summer semester is over, my brain is taken up its free space and decided to fixate on things that I have been trying to forget.

One thing I’m still learning about myself is that, in order to avoid a lot of emotional wounds, I like to keep myself busy. But when the extra busyness of the semester is over, I struggle to ignore the things that I haven’t made the time to process. These are almost always the things I need to process most, as well as the things that are the hardest for me to think about and look over. But I can’t keep myself hyper-busy forever.

Before I begin: I have an appointment with my doctor this week to get myself back on antidepressants, and now that my health insurance is back up, I’ll be looking for a therapist to help me talk through the issues I’m about to address. So I have plans in action to get myself the help I need. And if there’s one thing I could say to ya’ll, one thing for you to take away from this post, it’s that it’s more than okay to ask for help.

So here’s the deal…

I’m angry.
I’m angry most of the time.
I don’t like being angry and I wish I wasn’t/didn’t have to feel angry, but anger is also a normal and healthy reaction to the things I’ve been through.

I’ve finally reached a point where I simply cannot keep pushing through without starting a massive deconstruction of my Christian upbringing. And I have been doing a lot of deconstruction, but in the theological and ideological sense, not in the personal sense. There are so many things I’ve endured in churches in my past, things that continue to haunt and hurt. I need healing, and I need a release from these things. I can’t bury them anymore.

And on top of that, I have been completely taken advantage of (yet again), and the enforcement of my boundaries led to another fallout. And ya’ll, I really am proud of the ways I handled this situation. But it doesn’t make the emotional pain any easier to bear. As the fallout was in the process of taking place, my partner pointed out that this person – whom I’ve known since 2015 – was being enormously emotionally abusive and projecting their insecurities from a past relationship onto me. And there were a lot of things that led up to this fallout, but suffice to say that it was horrible to experience. They sent me drunk texts, manipulative texts, guilt trips, put words in my mouth, and all over the course of just a couple of weeks, when I had already asked them to give me space.

PSA: drunk words are sober thoughts, as a friend of mine told me the other day.
And people who are comfortable ignoring your boundaries on a repeated basis – never once acknowledging that they were – are people who care solely about what they can get from you. That’s not friendship or love, it’s selfishness.

And today, I’m angry.

I’m angry because I was fighting hard to save that friendship.
I’m angry because I was only asking for space so that we could build a mutually healthy and respectful friendship that didn’t revolve around toxicity.
I’m angry because I wanted things to improve, but not at the expense of my own wellbeing.
I’m angry because I didn’t and don’t owe anyone my emotional or mental safety just to make them feel better.
I’m angry because I could see the breakdowns as they were happening, and I tried to communicate them, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t listen.
I’m angry because I shouldn’t have to keep my own needs shut off or hidden just to maintain friendships.

But this is also part of what I need to heal. Because I have always been one who gives until I am empty. I have always been one who struggles with boundaries. I have always been one who works hard, even when my energy isn’t being met in a relationship.

And I have to stop doing that, even when it means losing people I care about. Because ultimately, they don’t care about me, if they’re willing to treat me that way.

So today is for anger and making plans for therapy and getting back on medication, and sitting with the anger.