Short Story; Anger Management

Anger Management was definitely something I felt I needed when I was growing up. I had alot of suppressed anger from an early age. From being toyed with and teased alot for my height, to being shunned for always being the new girl and never fitting in. To never wanting to truly fit in, in fear that I would just be uprooted again once I made new friends in said new neighborhoods. Being at my Grandmothers more than my cousins and constantly having practical jokes played on me by my Uncles that were still in their late teenage years. It was stressful for a child my age. I grew this rigid outer shell of a "dont mess with me" sort of character.. That's where the nickname " Molly Means" came into play.

This anger stayed with me all the way up to middle school and through high school. As a young black child you aren't given counseling sessions.  You just suck it all in and endure until its over, then bury it all. Pretend it has no effect on who you become when you grew older.. Then in subtle ways it starts to seep out.. Someone may speak to you in a harsh way and trigger it.. Someone may nudge you in the grocery store and trigger it... Someone may treat you indifferently just enough for you to notice and you go home thinking of that one incident all night reenacting it in your mind over and over until your head hurts.. Thinking of all the ways you should have done something to show your dismay.. Show your anger.. Show them just who they are messing with...  

Of course this anger is something I seek counseling for and in ways it helps to talk it out and tell someone you don't feel its normal to want to make someone hurt physically, since you feel they have no emotions mentally for you to hurt..  Your mind knows this isn't normal, but I've found with things that are not right in life, the more you do them the more right they seem.. I think this is also why abused women must stay with their abuser... He must love you huh? He must care or he wouldn't act out the way he does? He cant use his words that he feels falls on deaf ears so he uses his hands on you? No one will ever make that make sense to me, but I have heard that explanation before.. 

In dealing with women all of my adult life I cannot say that domestic violence doesn't happen in these spaces.. If anything I think its way more probable and that too is kept very hush. We are supposed to know how each other feels more than a man does aren't we? We are supposed to cherish each other more since we are cut from the same cloth.. Aren't we? We are not emulating a heterosexual relationship and we are both two women. In that same vein though we are all still emotional creatures.. Too much of anything is not good. Two highly emotional people.. One may be more aggressive than the other.. It's human nature to be attracted to your opposite in ways of personality.. Some may want someone a little more abrasive than them to feel protected. Just because we are both women does not mean you do not want to feel protected by your partner. To know you are safe. 

When I was younger I got into a physical altercation with my first girlfriend. I remember like it was yesterday of course because that's something you don't forget. We went at it blow for blow. We both were being untrue to be honest. I found out she was who she was and she thought I was stupid for some reason since I was younger.. Nope. Not at all. We were both very feminine, but she was older and less green and more aggressive than me.. She had two children and had a whole life prior to me.. We were both still fighting being completely in the life we had chosen for ourselves, but she placed it all on me as the confused one.. She thought her things were all done in the dark... Crazy when I think back on it.. She found out I slept with someone else from a friend of hers that she was actually sleeping with ( how cliché) and she confronted me about it in her home. I denied it at first and then could not deny it anymore as she had proof. I then said what I said and before I knew it she had pushed me hard and I flew into the closet.. While getting up something snapped in me.... That anger... Waiting... Sitting.... I grabbed the iron from the top shelf of the closet and charged at her. Hit her over the head with it and she fell down. I blacked out..  I dropped the iron.. She was laying there looking bewildered and shocked... Cussing.. Getting up... Charged at me hitting me in the back.. I couldn't feel it.. I was still just numb mentally and in my head.. It felt like I was floating.. I wasn't really there.. I grabbed my car keys, my bag and left.. I ignored her calls.. All the voicemails screaming of me being all kinds of whores.. Nothing at all said about the fight.. We were together for 2 years.. That was the first and only time that ever happened and we never got back together.. There was nothing to ever go back to.. We had both disrespected each other to the highest and on no level was that ever love.. A bit of infatuation, but I never truly loved her.. I stayed for the other reasons in those two years.. 

Up until that point I'd never thought women fought one another. In actuality gay relationships end in domestic violence deaths more than heterosexual.... 

That taught me in my early 20's that anger doesn't just disappear just because it isn't acted on.. It lays dormant until its triggered.. 

Tru Straub ~