I don’t believe in the five stages of grief. I do, however, believe that there can be different stages of healing. Sadness was a huge stage for me that took years to work through after my dog Sawyer’s death. Recently, I realized that I’ve entered a stage of anger. Here are some musings on that.
Looking back on my life, it’s hard for not to feel angry over how much of it has gone. I loathe how many people have treated me terribly even when I’ve treated them as best as I can. What’s worse is when I’ve started treating them as they’ve treated me and then they explode on me. I’ve dealt with so many hypocrites who thought it was fine to treat me like garbage while demanding I treat them like royalty. It’s hard to feel anything other than furious at them for hitting me, yelling at me, stealing and destroying my stuff, belittling me, and doing any number of other awful things to me while acting like it was the worst thing in the world whenever I made a civil request for them to treat me better or dared respond in kind to their abuse.
It’s hard to say how long I’ve been in this anger stage. Part of that difficulty is the fact that I’ve felt angry for much of my life. This stage, however, feels quite different. In many ways, my temper is much shorter than it used to be, and I’m more likely to take out anger on others or simply turn cold and walk out of their lives. Aside from the abuses mentioned above, part of the anger comes from sadness. I miss the sense that either things are ok or that they will be ok. That was such a peaceful, easy feeling that I had for much of my life until the last six years. In addition to getting along better with almost everyone back then, everyone seemed more at ease. I often find myself wishing for more of those good times where I could relax and feel at peace for more than a week without something terrible happening. It was so nice when I had fairly good health along with tons of time, money, and options for visiting friends who live far away, traveling to weekend swing dance workshops, and going out multiple times a week to dance and visit with friends. In addition to feeling sad that all of that nice stuff is gone and isn’t coming back, I also feel angry and bitter about it. It now seems like a lovely dream that ended with a rude awakening into a nightmare, and I fear that there will be no more such dreams for me.
I also feel sad and irritated to have lost much of my idealism, optimism, and hope. That loss comes from the many struggles I have had and still have despite all the progress I’ve made, especially with my emotional intelligence. I feel resentful toward those who are getting to do much more of what they want in life than I am and who seem to feel more satisfied than I do. Sometimes, that resentment comes up when I see someone who has one or more pets; it reminds me of the life I shared with Sawyer, which makes me miss him even more and feel upset that I can no longer share the joy of those who still have their beloved animal friends. On top of it all, I even feel angry about feeling angry and struggling so much with it.
Simply realizing all of this seems to have released a great deal of anger. That’s encouraging. All the letting go I’ve done this year has also certainly helped. On that note, I’ve been able to personally verify the point David Hawkins made in Letting Go that releasing lots of fear also tends to release lots of anger. That’s been a big help since anger is still one of the most difficult emotions for me to welcome and release. Despite that, it seems like I’ll have to focus on releasing anger directly in order to remove what remains of it. A reminder that sometimes helps me release anger is the fact that anger is just a feeling, and there are no wrong feelings. The important thing is what we do with the mad that we feel, as Mister Rogers said. Unfortunately, anger has been my most suppressed emotion from a young age, so it’s hard for me to handle it in healthy ways. I hope that that changes in this stage, however long it lasts. It’d be nice for this stage to pass quickly so that I can move to freer and more peaceful emotional states. We’ll see what happens.