Member-only story
This Is Us
Stop Telling Me Anger Is A Vice
There’s no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ emotions
Are you finished? A wild-eyed, panting, nine-year-old boy is throwing chairs at the wall. The room is emptied of people but full of feelings. Shoulders bunched and eyebrows furrowed, he expends his energy through his arms and legs. Toppling over desks and throwing chairs, scattering pencils and markers, and ripping up paper towels and tissue boxes. He kicks a backpack across the floor, throws his head back, and howls.
The anger expels itself in jerky movements. Fire brimming from his heart like a slightly too ripe peach bursting in the heat. Standing sideways by the closed door, I shoo away the teachers gathering in the hallway. Outbursts of repressed pain invite attention like car wrecks invite rubbernecking and chum invites sharks. He’ll feel cornered if they circle him, trapped like a wild animal.
As I watch him pant, exhausted, that three-word question above comes unbidden to my mind. That was the question I got as a child. If I cried during a lecture or set down plates at the table a little too hard out of frustration or huffed under my breath in anger, that question greeted me. Did you get that silly want to be treated as a person out of your system? Are you done thinking your little emotions matter? Is the…
