It's really hard to make me angry. I get annoyed or frustrated easily and often, but true anger is a rare occurrence for me. I'm generally a very forgiving person (of others, not so much of myself), but there is a short list of what are, to me, unforgivable offenses. If someone does one of the things on that list, they earn themselves a spot on my permanent shit list (which has exactly two people on it, to show how rare this really is), and I get ANGRY. I mean INCENSED. White hot fire angry. Righteous anger at a grave injustice angry. End of the world angry.
What most of my unforgivable offenses list boils down to is gravely wronging or deeply hurting someone who is extremely important to me. When I care that much, when I'm engaged and connected and passionate, I get very protective. I see whoever or whatever the object of my passion is as inherently GOOD. So to wrong them is to do a great injustice. When that righteous anger really gets flowing, it brings out what I call my To Kill a Mockingbird defense. There is a passage in To Kill a Mockingbird that always stuck with me:
"That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. 'Your father's right,' she said. 'Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corn cribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'"
To me, this has always rung true in its intended metaphorical sense. Wronging people who are inherently good (mockingbirds) is a sin. It's the ultimate sin against humanity. Goodness is to be protected at all costs, and the To Kill a Mockingbird defense is my brain's way of reinforcing that.
Of course, I'm usually not in a position to actually throw it at the offender. In 2009, when my passion broke my heart, this consumed me. I had no way of expressing my anger in any real way, or having any real impact on the situation. I could talk to other people in my position, and they would sometimes agree with me, but they also had no agency in what was happening. After many years, the white hot anger finally lessened to a low simmer (most of the time, unless something triggered it back into full force temporarily). Since then, I've never been connected enough to or passionate enough about anything for that kind of anger to occur, and I had actually forgotten about it. But now, as I'm reconnecting with the part of my core self that IS passionate, and DOES connect that deeply, I am also rediscovering my capacity for this intense anger, and the continued (maybe even strengthened?) resonance of the To Kill a Mockingbird defense. I've been struggling with that a lot in recent days. It's so powerful, and sometimes it can be overwhelming. It can override all of my logical and other emotional parts of my brain, and it's very easy to get completely consumed by it. But I'm trying to keep the perspective that it's a good thing, that this intensity of emotion and specifically anger means that I DO still have the capacity for that depth of passion and connection, and that I AM opening it up again, and that those parts of myself that I once thought were lost forever are still very much alive. I'm still me. I'm still a creature of pure emotion and passion, and I still exist from a place of so much love. As long as you don't try to kill my mockingbirds.
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