Anger is an energy

The title of this post comes from the autobiography of John Lydon (Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols), a copy of which has been sitting on one of Frog’s shelves for several years waiting to be read.

All last weekend I ranted and raved at Frog. We got into one of our dead ends and I let fly. I didn’t care any more. I said things I’d been wanting to say for years. I shouted so much I got a sore throat.

By Sunday afternoon I was exhausted. The anger disappeared and I bubbled tears like an over-full drain. We then went to Sainsbury’s for the weekly shop and I felt amazing. Free. Real. Whole.

Frog, bless him, although confused, had put up with it all. ‘The anger is important,’ he kept saying.

Yes.

Since then I’ve had a migraine and a cold, but they’ve given me time to think. Anger is an energy. You need to acknowledge it. You need to do something about it and it doesn’t have to be destructive. Squashing it, as I was always taught to do, is so so wrong.

Anger is what protects us, and without it how can we be open with other people? How can we trust them if we don’t trust ourselves to stand up for ourselves? Without anger we are victims.

So now I have to undo a lifetime of bad habits, and welcome this energy called anger.

I’d never read the ‘William’ books by Richmal Crompton although Frog had always spoken highly of them, and for Christmas he gave me the first ten, a set of facsimiles of the first (1922) editions. I’ve devoured them.

In the face of appalling treatment by most of the grown-ups around him (did people really treat children like that in the 1920s?) William is cheerful, confident, selfish, unscrupulous, inventive and devious. I love him. He is my new hero. I shall model myself on him.