My grief counselor often asks me about anger. Sometimes she wants to know if I’m angry at a person, other times if I’m angry about a situation. She keeps track of my anger so I don’t have to.
The thing is, I’m not as angry as you’d expect. That’s not to say I haven’t had some moments over the past year. Still, I’ve gotten much better at figuring out my sore spots and unhealthily compartmentalizing it because I have other emotions vying for my attention right now.
I’m not mad at Christopher for taking his life. I think there’s an expectation that I would be angry that he deprived me of himself or find his action selfish. Don’t get me wrong, I’m miserable about it and hate it more than I will ever be able to articulate, but angry? I can’t be. I’m not. I hurt too much and miss him too terribly to have any angry feelings toward Christopher.
There are pockets of anger deep inside me, however, that my counselor and I probe from time to time. Much like losing Christopher, these are situations surrounding his loss that I can never change or resolve. Instead, I’ve boxed them up and put them on a shelf to focus on more productive healing processes. Did I mention I prefer to compartmentalize? Don’t worry, my counselor and I will get to them in time.
I think what’s made it easier to shelve these negative feelings is that I’m not in denial about them. I’ve acknowledged the handful of things I’m angry about, sat with the feelings, and laid them out on the table for my counselor to pick through. She gave me permission to be angry and equipped me with ways to live with the feelings without letting them eat at me.
It also helps that the things I’m angry about aren’t in my immediate orbit. I don’t have to be in situations or deal with people that will poke those pockets of anger and make them bleed. Out of sight, out of mind may not be the healthiest approach, but it works for me and my counselor signed off on it. Compartmentalization!
So, yeah, I have the anger in check. Mostly.
I’ll cop to being perpetually irritated about one thing, though.
My life has been permanently robbed of normalcy and it pisses me off. The whole thing I mentioned earlier about always bracing myself for an unexpected ambush of emotion is only one aspect of it, and not even the worst.
Life with your children is supposed to play out in a predictable way. You raise them then send them out into the world to come into their own. You rejoice when they land their dream job and comfort them when a romance ends. You watch them blossom into adulthood with the same excitement you watched them take their first steps. So boringly normal.
Well, I don’t get to do that normal stuff with Christopher and it ticks me off. I’ve been robbed. I want what I looked forward to having while bringing up my son. I want what we had together during his brief life.
I want my son back.
But it’s not going to happen and I’m not going to be able to fully accept that until I’m damn good and ready.
And yet, I’m honestly not mad at Christopher. I can’t even be fully angry at the loss of my normalcy because it pales in comparison to the degree of pain he must have felt to make him end his life. I guess being pissed off at something, though, is easier than feeling my loss in all its crushing totality. I’m not that strong.