Hi, I’m Cate de Leon. And this piece is about anger.
It’s an excerpt from a longer essay I wrote on a trip to Dubrovnik, inspired by Game of Thrones. You can find the full piece on my blog, Madrilena from Manila.
“I want you to know I understand. Even though we’re enemies, you and I, I understand the fury that drives you.”
This is my favorite Cersei Lannister scene.
On a recent trip to Dubrovnik, I was looking down at the Old Town (popularly known as King’s Landing) as the sun set. I spent each day of that trip feeling a different Game of Thrones character live inside me. That day, it was Cersei. In a stroke of synchronicity, I happened to scroll to an Instagram post about anger by psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera.
“When you come out of survival mode, you might feel angry. Anger is your body coming back to life.”
She mentioned feelings of intense rage over how you were treated and fantasies about revenge—emotions that our current polite landscape finds distasteful.
On social media, the recommended form of revenge is to live your best life. It’s a race to move on and be the first to be happy, and the participants are people who have clearly been maimed and are still dislocated in some parts. I think deep down we are all aware of this. But it can still be an uphill struggle, resisting the temptation to rush to be evolved. I thought that if I betrayed that I still felt things, that would be snatched up as evidence that: “Look, she’s still not over it. She’s not moving on like I am.” (which, by the way, are not the thoughts of a truly over it person)
Owning the visceral waves of my anger has been one of the most healing things I have done—not forcing forgiveness, not love and light, not living my ~best life. It was letting thoughts like, “Fuck. You. You piece of shit that also looks like shit,” shoot and race freely inside me. It was pettiness, the most acidic forms of poison, acknowledging what had been done to me and the resulting damage to me as a person. It was for once letting go of my obsessiveness with objectivity and standing by my subjectivity as a legitimate part of what happened.
It was that one magical step that my body had been waiting for. Immediately, I could feel the base of my spine, which had been forcibly yanked out, not only being reconstructed but reinforced—bone, muscle, flesh. I felt more solid, more embodied. I felt more conviction behind my actions and intentions. I felt like I could be sure even when I wasn’t. I felt like I could genuinely reach out and do good things, instead of being thinly inspired by the desire to prove I wasn’t the monster they said I was.
I felt whole and as deep and as infinitely dimensional as a human being ought to feel.
Anger freed me up to love my loved ones harder. I can’t explain it, but it’s almost like those two authentic energies feed each other. I once read in a book by Brene Brown that having an open heart and a strong back go hand-in-hand.
“Feeling anger is a sign of healing. You’re no longer numb. You’re ready to protect yourself,” LePera continued in her post.
There will always be a level where I really do believe that monsters are rare. I will always strive to understand where people are coming from. But understanding people doesn’t have to result in me feeling universal empathy. I’m free to not like what I understand and to state plainly that they have scorched my earth. I can say that I had thought many times of doing what I could to patch things up, but each time this was vetoed by how it was no longer possible for me to feel safe in their presence.
I will always consider my faults and the ways that I have caused pain—because I have. There are things that I regret having done. That being said, perfection is not a prerequisite to anger. This requirement does not exist for other people, and I have no idea why I thought of requiring it for myself. I might wish I had taken better care of some people—and they could have taken better care of me, too. This isn’t about counting wrongs. It’s about learning to take my place in situations that include me. I thought I was being generous by removing myself to a good degree. But avoidance was the bomb.
I have no desire to revolve my life around bitterness. Even scorched earth, once it’s fully acknowledged, softens over time. I remember thinking, concluding that I had no intention of planting a rose garden over it. But a few days later, I looked over and noticed a shallow but vast layer of water, soothing over my cracks. Authenticity is strange. A wormhole between opposite ends of the spectrum.
Anger has a crucial role to play, and it is no one’s domain to expect or tell us to be over it. We don’t choose the pain that comes to us. But once it is inflicted, it is ours. And the power (dare I say, the luxury) of directing this fire belongs to no one else.
Madrileña from Manila 