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Do you ever feel so angry that you don’t realize you’re angry?
Like: You’ve been existing at this baseline of weird and wispy frustration, of charged anxiety for long enough that that unnamed feeling you’re feeling—unpleasant; tight—has become the (0,0) origin on the XY plane of your personality. A point that’s so obvious, so central, so in-the-very-center-of-your-chest that it’s become anonymous.
You don’t realize that you’re angry because over the course of the past day/week/month, you’ve ignored the feeling into a corner. You don’t realize the feeling’s tipped and spilled, silently spreading. Placid, sour milk. It flavors your breath. You exhale it into everything you do, every interaction you have.
Maybe anger isn’t even the right word. Maybe it is just anxiety. Or frustration. Or maybe all of those feelings are relatives ‘round the same Thanksgiving table, having a frenzied conversation in your busy, busy brain. Interrupting each other, talking so loudly, you can’t be sure who’s leading the narrative. What do you feel?
Maybe you don’t know how you feel because you’re not letting yourself feel much of anything, because you know that things are going to all be okay, at least relatively, at least eventually, and that future projection undercuts how you feel right now because it makes your present feelings feel pointless because they’re just temporary, and so you deny your feelings any expression, assuming they’ll dissolve before the Everything is Okay™ happens. Your feelings feel like an overreaction, a baby’s tantrum, they feel like they should belong to someone else.
Why are you mad?
Or…maybe you’d feel better if you just let it all out.
Yeah. I need to let it all out.
Can I tell you what’s been bugging me?
Are you a safe space? We’re buds, right?
Okay. Cool. Well, then—I’m gonna tell you what’s been fucking up my SHIT, because I’ve felt so frozen physically, creatively, and emotionally, I’ve felt so weighed down by this congealed clot of uncoughed something that I HAVE to tell you—
[I grab your hand]
C’mere c’mere c’mere…
[I pull you into the bathroom where nobody else can hear me because everyone is in the kitchen/backyard/living room]
[I take a disconcertingly big inhale]
I’M SO FUCKING FRUSTRATED WITH SO MANY DIFFERENT THINGS AT ONCE LIKE MY NEVER-ENDING DIGESTIVE AND GENERAL HEALTH PROBLEMS THAT MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO ENJOY FOOD AND I’M SUPPOSED TO BE MANAGING STRESS TO GET OVER THOSE FUCKING HEALTH PROBLEMS BUT I CAN’T RELAX BECAUSE MY DAD JUST BETRAYED MY WHOLE FAMILY BY TAKING A SECRET TRIP TO COLOMBIA TO FUCK AROUND WITH SOME CAM GIRL EVEN THOUGH HE’S STILL MARRIED TO MY MOM AND ALSO—BONUS POINTS!—THE CAM GIRL IS YOUNGER THAN I AM!! WHICH IS SO FUCKING GROSS!! AND I ALREADY FEEL SO OLD ALL THE TIME AND I WISH I COULD STILL TALK TO MY DUMBASS DAD BECAUSE I LOVE HIM BUT I CAN’T TALK TO HIM RIGHT NOW BECAUSE OF COURSE I CAN’T AND I’M CHANGING MY LAST NAME TO MY MOM’S LAST NAME WHICH IS EXCITING BECAUSE I’VE WANTED TO DO THAT FOR A LONG TIME REGARDLESS OF ALL THIS ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT BECAUSE MY MOM’S LAST NAME IS A BEAUTIFUL, SPANISH LAST NAME—BADILLO!—SO MAYBE PEOPLE WILL FINALLY BELIEVE MY PALE ASS IS MEXICAN BUT THE WHOLE NAME THING HAS THROWN ME INTO A WEIRD IDENTITY CRISIS AND SO I KEEP CHANGING IT BACK AND FORTH ON INSTAGRAM WHICH, AS A PLATFORM, IS MORE OBSOLETE BY THE DAY I KNOW, SO WHO CARES HOW I REPRESENT MYSELF ON THERE ANYWAY? BUT ALSO WHEN TF AM I SUPPOSED TO FIND TIME TO MIGRATE TO TIKTOK? I’M NOT A TIKTOK GUY! I DON’T KNOW HOW TO BE A TIKTOK GUY! AND I HATE THAT I CARE ABOUT MY STAGNANT FOLLOWER COUNT ON APPS THAT ARE JUST A CONFUSING MIX OF FOOD VIDEOS AND FACETUNES AND WAR CRIMES—WHICH, DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ABOUT THE WAR CRIMES THAT ABSOLUTELY STAMP THE WOES OF MY LITTLE LIFE TO ABSOLUTE OBLIVION!!—MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE KEPT THIS ALL TO MYSELF!
And you might say: Wow, Nat. That’s a lot to shove into your first Substack entry after months of hiatus.
And I would say: You’re right. But I don’t know where else to put all of these feelings. A journal feels too closed-off; I’m in a mood to release my emotions publicly because that is my cute mental disorder. I mean, not too publicly. This isn’t a shaved-head cry for help (though we do love those). No, I’m not trying to firework-launch my traumatic load into space on a Jeff Bezos dick rocket (remember that thing?)…
I’m just finally taking out the trash from my cluttered head and dumping it on the driveway for the whole neighborhood to see, to motion my tired little arms over all of it, to ask: What might I make from all this fucking garbage?
This Week’s Topic
…Is ANGER. OBVIOUSLY, YOU IDIOT!
Sorry. I’m going through some shit. Clearly.
For the past few weeks, I’ve lived in a skinless body. Exposed nerves upset by the slightest breeze. Flayed and flinching as that woman on the muscular diagram posters from Anatomy 101.
This week’s letter is for all the other angry girlies (and boy-ies) out there who want to, howyousay, cut a bitch. I’m with you, mamas. Let’s tomahawk wine bottles across a parking lot just to watch their sweet, sharp crash.
Let those shards bounce off the tar and rip right through me.
What’s Anger Even For?
Yesterday, at a loss, I Googled: What anger even for?
What anger for is, apparently, this:
“Studies have identified anger as being a secondary emotion. A secondary emotion is an emotion fueled by other emotions. For example, if you become hurt in some way, you might express this negative emotion instead of emotional and physical pain – it might be easier to express anger than express hurt. Hurt can make you feel vulnerable, and when you feel helpless, you might feel as if you need to protect yourself. When you are angry, you might feel under attack or frustrated. Masking your feelings of sadness, hurt or grief with anger can be easier than experiencing the primary emotion.”
(According to anger-management-rehab facility, New Hope Ranch.)
In other words: The hip bone is connected to the leg bone is connected to the bone I have you pick with YOU, WORLD.
If I reach a hand into my gaping, screaming mouth, past the fist-ball of anger that tangles my tongue—if I tiptoe my fingers allllll the way down my esophagus and into my slippery insides—I’d find that my anger grows in tendrils from frustration. That’s its mother emotion. Frustration salted with anxiety. My anger is snapping, cornered, chihuahua.
Chihuahua is absolutely an adjective when it comes to my anger. I’ve never been good at controlling it. It’s overreactive and ineffective as a small dog, and just like a small dog, I ignore it. Yap! Yap! Yap! It’ll stop soon. Not because I’ve done anything about it. Just—it’ll get tired. It’ll pitter out on its own. Right?
When my anger gets tired, it melts to tears. Sometimes, a stream of them. Often, a tsunami. Almost always, I’m surprised there are any tears at all. Sadness accosts me like a thief in a dark alley. SMACK! over the back of my head. As I buckle to my knees, I think, bewildered: How long has sadness been at my heels?! Blame my competitive-athlete upbringing (I always do). It did not an emotionally-aware-human make.
Sigh. The mad bone is connected to the hysterical sadness bone. What I should probably search is: How can recover when anger starts to oxidize inside body?
I’ve ignored it too long, it’s starting to rust the pipes.
Things I Wish I Could Satisfactorily Google
Google’s not there when you need REAL answers.
[at my keyboard, typing]
how forgive
what’s wrong w dads
why my dad have very cliché midlife crisis where he emotionally flamethrower whole family for girl younger than his daughter
how not throw up from emotions
why writers strike have to last so long so i’m still poor now on top of everything else
why feel bad for feeling bad because other people have it so much worse
is ok to feel angry about things not war-related?
for real what’s wrong w dads in general why so many friends have bad dad stories
how make mom feel better forever
how be at home living my life but also with mom to make sure she happy
why gut always bloated
why always want to break something
top 10 things to break when you want to break something
how forget
how not be jealous of people w more followers
is karma real
why me?
Call Me By My (Mother’s) Name
I’m changing my last name to my mom’s.
I’m Natalie Badillo now.
Not much is in my control here. But this decision is.
Let’s Go to Baskin Robbins
Whenever I’m too upset/sad/depressed, I have to call 911.
By which I mean, I have to call in the big guns.
By which I mean, I have to call my abuelita.
On FaceTime today, she sees the sleepy in my eyes. Fatigue from anger embers, former sadness, and the results of spending two weeks on a no-sugar, supplement-heavy gut-healing protocol that’s my latest failed experiment to improve my fickle intestines.
What are you eating, mama?
I’m eating a green apple. I tell her I’m not very hungry because I went ham on the carbs yesterday. Rice, sweet potatoes, fruits. Everything I couldn’t eat on the stupid failed diet that gave me serious vertigo. She shakes her head—You shouldn’t be on a diet. Damn right, I shouldn’t.
She shows me a pomegranate. Look how pretty the seeds! She’s making a yogurt parfait. Satisfied with her creation, she sits on the couch and takes a bite with a pink plastic spoon.
Oh my god, gramma. Is that a Baskin Robbins spoon?
She laughs. It is. She says, I went to get ice cream with Mary.
I smile a small smile. Mary was my grandma’s best friend. She passed away two days ago.
You went to ice cream with Mary recently?
Yeah, last week. She wanted to go get ice cream but she likes McDonald’s the best, so we went there first and then we went to Baskin Robbins because that’s what I like the best.
What’dyou get?
Chocolate chip sundae. With loooots of chocolate—what is it—the sauce! So much chocolate. I love it.
The joy on my grandma’s face. Enough to make me believe ice cream might be the cure for all of my health problems. Forget these fuckin’ supplements.
She continues: You know what? Mary had cancer for so long, but even with all of the chemo and all of the pills you know what she never said?
What?
She never said, “Why me?”
Oh, Abuela. I can’t help but want to gather all of your words into my hands and thread them into a bracelet so that I can have them with me, always.
I ask, though I already know the answer: Is it really hard not to have her here anymore?
It’s hard. But I’ll get past it.
(she pauses)
Well, I’ll never get past it. But, you know. You learn to deal with it.
Until next week, friends. Thanks for reading this personal vent. Maybe next week I’ll have a more fun palate cleanser like: THE BEST THINGS I BOUGHT ON BLACK FRIDAY!!
We can only hope.
xx
nat
just want to say, as a fellow light skinned latino-esque person, i recently changed my last name back to my puerto rican name and its an ongoing process but it feels great/scary/wtf. mixed race family dynamics are cuh-razy.
and i also have lifelong digestive and health issues too, maybe its all connected ected ected woo woo woo...
This was fucking GOLD. Your power with words is phenomenal. Just upgraded.
Also, if you're into meditations, I have one for anger and one for forgiveness that I can shoot you through if you want. They're not your standard just-think-positive crap. Tell me if you want them.
EIther way, I'm glad I found you and look forward to welcoming you into my inbox 😁