Demons

I was on my morning jog when they attacked me again. Maybe you’ve also experienced them. These annoying year-round pests come over uninvited, grab hold of your memories and emotions and insist on staying there. I call them my demons. The disease works in the following way:

You’ll be going along, minding your own business, when WHAM! a terrible memory from the past enters your mind. It usually comes when you’re working on something frustrating, but they can show up at any time. After they appear, they go through the Rolodex of your memories, pick the ones that carry the worst emotions, and play them on the IMAX screen in your brain. Then you are forced to relive this memory as well as the rage, pain, and frustration that is associated with it. And no matter how hard you try, you can’t shake them off. They have a death grip on you, and you are forced to submit to them. These little gremlins don’t just know how to hold your mind hostage; they also do it in the worst possible way. They like to pick incidents of particular injustice where you were powerless, when you didn’t fight back, when you were abused. They revel in your sense of despair and anger. You hate them. You have not figured out how to get rid of them. Usually they stay for a while and then disappear, but they always come back. Like the ants in your bathroom. You’re starting to feel like they’re a hopeless case. No matter what you do, they will not leave you alone.

From my own experience, I know that these monsters wreak all types of havoc. During these episodes, I have intense physical reactions. I clench my teeth. I ball my hands into fists. I punch myself. I bite myself. I leave bruises that last for days and teeth marks that last for hours. I chew on my lips and the insides of my cheeks. I feel the anger burning all over my body. It leaves a hard lump in my throat. My stomach clenches up. My adrenaline reaches dangerous levels, and I don’t know what to do with it.

What might be even worse than the anger itself is being forced to bottle it up. No matter how angry I feel, no matter how much I’m seething on the inside, I must carry about my normal routine and not lash out at innocent bystanders. I don’t want to be the next shooter to make national headlines. So I control myself as much as possible and hide any sign that anything is out of the ordinary. Looking at me, you would never guess that I want to throttle something. But you would be dead wrong. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve beaten the crap out of my mattress or screamed into my pillow. Sometimes it feels as if I’m always angry.  

I want to let go of my anger. Believe me, I do. But it’s not that easy. I’ve heard what people have said about dealing with anger—that in the end, it just affects you, and you need to drop it.  My pal Buddha gives the best summary of what many have said about letting go of anger. He said, “Holding on to anger is like holding on to a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone else. In the end, you are the one who gets burned.”

Sage advice. But I’m not Buddha. And expunging one’s anger is easier said than done.

I don’t believe that I willingly “choose” to hold on to my anger as much as it chooses to hold on to me. I have tried countless times to do what I can to not let my demons overcome me. I distract myself, I take naps, I listen to music, I try to think about different things. Nothing helps. Furthermore, my soul rebels at the idea of “letting go” of anger. I don’t like the idea of writing off a debt someone owes me. Some people call this “forgiveness.”  Every time I get close to “forgiving” it feels like I’m saying that what my siblings did to me was no big deal after all. I don’t like that. Anger is a healthy and appropriate emotion in the face of a memory of an abusive incident.    

But I do believe that chronic anger is unhealthy. I once had a therapist say to me, “I’m hesitant to tell you this, but I will. Bad things happen to people who are angry all the time. A lot of them end up getting cancer. That energy is really bad for the body. It can do terrible things to you.” This news shocked me. And it made me even more worried about my mental health. You don’t need to be a doctor to know that being angry all the time isn’t good. I don’t like being angry. It’s not fun for me. I don’t like giving myself bruises and bite marks. It’s also not fair to me. I’ve been abused way too much by others; I don’t need to add myself to the list. I live for the day where I will no longer be angry. That will be a wonderful, wonderful day for me.

But that day is very far away. Letting go of anger is not easy. Someone who hasn’t been through a trauma doesn’t understand exactly how hard it is to recover from it. They’ll give advice along the lines of, “This, too, shall pass.” That silly saying doesn’t apply to life struggles like this. Some things don’t “pass” without leaving permanent scars behind. You can still be reeling from the effects of abuse even decades after the fact.

My demons are some of my scars. I’m a pretty young person and coping with them. I know people in their forties and fifties who are doing the same. Hopefully that won’t be me. Hopefully one day I’ll find the perfect antidote to rid myself of them forever. For I know that if you don't find some way to exorcise your demons, they'll beat you up for the rest of your life.