a collaborative project in the lyric mode
Harper Wood
ANGER
she asks. You want to do the opposite of all of the emotional intelligence work I normally do with my clients, and you want to work backward toward irrationality and primal rage?
Yes. I think I do.
Okay, she says. But why?
I have no answer for her. I’m only thinking that I must be the only person in the world who is searching for the opposite of anger management courses.
The confidence with which people engage with the internet has been baffling to watch. The gradual regulation and monetization of the internet has transitioned the standard of engagement from anonymous interaction to fully public profiles. Every aspect of someone’s online habits cataloged, tracked, and spat back out in the form of targeted advertisements.
Whoever came up with the phrase “personalized advertisements” as a more palatable term for the ways that companies steal our information only to regurgitate it back to us in the form of flash sales holds all of my ire. The slow-growing complacency we all have to the companies stealing and selling the information of their users is only overshadowed by the disregard for personal privacy online.
I watch the disintegration of internet safety and online boundaries with clenched teeth and bewilderment, wondering WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING? DID NO ONE TEACH YOU HOW TO BEHAVE ONLINE? OF COURSE THEY DIDN’T, BECAUSE THIS ONLINE SPACE HAS BECOME SO RIDDLED WITH CORPORATIONS AND THE LOSS OF SAFE PLACES FOR CHILDREN AND THE OVER-SANITIZING OF EVERY OTHER WEBSITE AND APP AND ON AND ON AND I’M SICK OF SEEING CHILDREN FALL VICTIM TO A KIND OF CRUELTY THAT IS A HUNDRED TIMES WORSE THAN THE ANTI-BULLYING CAMPAIGNS THEY MADE ME WATCH WHEN I WAS NINE. I watch teenagers seven years younger than me post their location, their age, their psychiatric diagnoses on Twitter without any shame and I am left horrified at this carefree abandonment of safety. There is no regard for what other strangers on the internet may do with this brand-new knowledge of their face, their school, the conversations they have with their therapist. All of that is left available to the public and leaves me with a rock in my gut. I am only able to rid my body of it by hiding Twitter on the second page of a folder in my phone. I am too much of a coward to delete it fully. I am too afraid of the site to use it as everyone else does.
There is a more nuanced conversation to be had here, about the internet and identification and interpersonal online relationships. I have made my own mistakes, too. I have put things online that I wish I could take back, that I fear will haunt me until the day I die and all that is left of me is the ghost of my online presence. This is not that conversation. These are my thoughts, being rotated around in one of those bingo tumblers until a plastic ball with the quantified and correctly labeled emotion spits itself out on the table for you all to read about.
I REALLY WISH I DIDN’T HAVE TO POST THIS, AND IT’S NOT BECAUSE I’M UNHAPPY WITH WHAT I’VE WRITTEN. This will be the third piece of my writing to be printed online under my real name. This will probably be the most personal piece of writing I ever post online. And that’s terrifying. And I don’t want to do it. Expressing my feelings verbosely and boldly is not a natural act for me. This piece will pry my primal feelings out from the darkest pits of myself and put them on display for the entire world to read if they know where to look for it. I am scared to be doing this. I am embarrassed to be doing this. I am going to hide that I am doing it.
I am hiding, even now. Plain text, the color changed to fit the background to better hide all my ugly secrets from the rest of the world. Don’t read these words that will shriek at you like an open wound stinging with the need for a bandage. Let my words stay precise and reserved and continue to think of me as a put-together person posting pretty pieces for your eyes to read without a second thought behind the intention.
Or don’t. I’ve already defeated the purpose of hiding, already committed myself to this format. Do what you will with this piece. Once you read it, I will never be able to bring myself to touch it again.
Instructions for Engagement / Embarassed
Torn Throat / Resentful
The nature of living only 20 years is that the most obvious place to draw from for conflict and feelings and enough material to make an essay out of is my middle school and high school years. It would be easy to weave you a tale of teenage angst, queer discovery, and parental understanding. But I have written this story before. You have heard this story before — from a friend, or a graphic narrative memoir checked out from the library — I do not need to tell it to you again. I do not want to tell it to you.
I don’t want to tell you anything about myself.
God, I wish I were undefinable.
I wish that you could finish reading this piece and know nothing. I wish to be a formless enigma that is only identifiable to the people I know are safe people to know. I want you to forget my name attached to these experiences and then carry solely the intentions behind the words.
I know that I am asking the impossible of you.
YOU COULD JUST STOP READING HERE. NO ONE’S MAKING YOU READ THIS FAR ANYWAYS. YOU COULD CLOSE THE TAB. READ SOMETHING ELSE. GO READ ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE’S INTIMATE PERSONAL DETAILS THAT THEY’VE THROWN ONLINE WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD. THEY DON’T CARE IF YOU READ THIS. I DO. I CARE.
IT’S SO EASY TO FALL INTO APATHY AND SAY THAT I DON’T CARE. IF I PAUSE FOR A SECOND AND JUST TRY TO BREATHE, I EFFORTLESSLY CONVINCE MYSELF THAT THIS ISN’T THAT BIG A DEAL. I SHOULD JUST ACCEPT IT. I SHOULD STOP FIGHTING THIS WORLD THAT WE’RE ALREADY LIVING IN. BUT I DO CARE! I CARE WHAT GETS PUT UP ONLINE UNDER MY PUBLIC NAME.
I’m going to ask it anyways.
When people ask about transitioning, I’ll tell them without hesitation. To talk about dysphoria and testosterone and surgery and name changes and faith has become impersonal to me. My life story turns into an educational program because I think that maybe my words will have an effect. If I sanitize my language in just the right way, maybe I will breach the middle ground of understanding.
My grandma has a book titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. I don’t know if I’m doing any good, and I’m getting tired of trying and getting talked down to by preachers and people who think they know me better because they’ve known me almost but not all of my life. I am tired of talking to them. With every colder day, I feel myself withdrawing to darker corners, all my resentment curls around me like a constricting snake until I snap my arm and it lashes out with words I know I won’t understand how to take back. I would rather let this snake strangle me before I make that mistake.
I so desperately want to go up to my grandma and shout at her. Just once, I want to know HOW DID YOUR RELIGION BECOME SUCH A TWISTED AND UGLY PART OF YOU. Just once, I want to ask HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT YOU LOVE ME AND YET DESPITE EVERY PIECE THAT CONSTRUCTS ME. I just want to shout DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THE WHOLE POINT OF IT IS LOVE? EVERY BIT OF IT? WHY CAN’T YOU SEE THAT YOUR CHURCH IS ONLY PULLING YOU AWAY FROM THE ACTUAL CORE TENETS OF CHRISTIANITY AND REPLACING THEM WITH HATE AND A GODDAMN SUPERIORITY COMPLEX? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
The snake of resentment cinches around my throat, and I step further back into the shadows of my own mind. Self-censoring at the behest of responsibility; I respect my mother’s wishes to maintain a relationship with my grandma in the hopes that maybe one day she’ll come around and see me for who I am instead of who she wishes I was. Self-censoring out of fear; I worry that if I speak too intensely, I run the risk of splintering the already tenuous relationships I hold with grandparents, with brothers, with family.
No. FUCK! I said I wasn’t going to talk about familial understanding. I don’t want to talk about them. Let me sit here and pull together a piece that drags me deeper down to the point of undefinable anger. The longer I float on the surface level, the more afraid I will become of exploring the depths.
Here’s a story I haven’t told anyone before. It is about my family, but I’m sure you can already sense that most of what I write today will be full of contradictions. If it helps, you can pretend that this isn’t about my family. You can pretend I’m lying. I might even prefer that.
When my roommates aren’t around, I walk the house shirtless, baring the scars underneath my grafted nipples for the four walls of this rented house to see. In my senior year of high school, when my whole family was trapped inside the four walls of our house watching the world fall apart, my brother got into this habit first. It was getting to the warmer months, when the six people in this house were sweltering, but no one knew enough about leaving the house yet. The results of my brother’s workouts were starting to show, and in a demonstration of budding, pubescent, fifteen-year-old confidence, he would stand in the kitchen bare-chested, blending his protein shakes.
I HATED HIM THEN. HIS PRIVILEGE OF A MASCULINE BODY TO WALK AROUND SHIRTLESS WITH as I tugged at the loosening straps of my sweat-soaked binder to better hold myself together. I SHOUTED at him and his chocolate-banana-peanut butter shakes, I RANTED to my parents, I RAGED in my room. I wondered, why couldn’t he just put a shirt on when he wasn’t in his room? WHY COULDN’T I DO THE SAME AS HIM?
JEALOUSY has never eaten such an UGLY hole in my chest than when I stood in front of the mirrored closet doors of my childhood bedroom. Here, I could stand bare-chested, though never for very long. Soon the twin weights on my chest would become boulders dragging me down to a place of revulsion both for my body and my actions. Eventually, nausea would catch back up to me, as would jealousy, as would the tears.
I walk around shirtless now, only ever in my own home. I’m sure my brother does too, but we have not been shirtless in the same space since we were bathed together as children. Things will probably stay that way, until I hear him use the correct pronouns enough times that I no longer have to fear what he is seeing me as.
IT’S BEEN SIX YEARS, DOES HE KNOW HOW MUCH IT HURTS ME TO HEAR HIM CONTINUE TO SCREW UP, OVER AND OVER? BITING TONGUES, BLOODY TEETH, FINGERNAILS CHEWED DOWN TO NUBS AS I COAX HIM THROUGH WITH PATIENCE JUST ONE MORE TIME. WITH GRACE JUST ONE MORE TIME.
It’s been six years. He’s still a work in progress. So am I.
But this isn’t about him. This is not an essay about my brother, or the tumultuous relationship that is built off of projection and privilege and political splintering. My brother has nothing to do with my emotions except as a catalyst for realizing that something within me will turn rotten if I do not redirect those feelings toward where they should go.
There are no correct channels in the cavity of my chest to redirect these feelings. Something didn’t form right there growing up. Maybe I do blame my brother, or at least him alongside my mother, for having emotions so loud and strong that mine paled and rotted without a sound. Maybe the barrier all along was the heaviness there that I only just got cut out of me, and maybe now I will be able to open up those vents to allow these prickling emotions to burst forth with all the fullness they deserve. I want to be angry in a way that isn’t tear and scratched-up skin. I want to be angry enough to yell until my throat is hoarse and keep my eyes dry the whole time. It’s easy to pretend that all my ire toward my brother is simply gone now that I’ve come out the other side of surgery with my shirt pulled up and over my shoulders.
I neatly compartmentalize this experience as jealousy. My therapist says that’s a sign of emotional intelligence, to be able to categorize these things so neatly. I say I wish I would rather be angry about it instead of intelligent. I only partially mean it.
Bare-Chested / Jealous
The Soles of My Feet / Enraged
Frustration becomes rage quickly if it’s around long enough to gain a definition. Sub-categories: Computer rage, gamer rage, wrap rage, air rage, all of these pipelines well-traveled and defined by Merriam-Webster dictionary authors and Wikipedia contributors, who I turn to in order to define rage for me because I cannot do it myself. Rage directed at a specific item or process, rage against the machine, rage which needs a direction, it needs a target, if it doesn’t have a target, rage falls apart into a tantrum and tears and nothingness and I don’t understand rage.
Rage is a distant feeling to me, a whisper of something I recently touched upon, but moved past just as quickly because even typing the word felt uncomfortable. I can use rage to define any number of things but my own experience, because rage is specific, and directed, and rage is, more often than not, gendered and racialized to a severe degree. And I am undefinable, or at least, I wish to be.
There is rage and then there is feminine rage. This dichotomy assumes masculine as the prefix when there isn’t an otherwise visible one. Searching images of rage shows me stock photos of men I stare blankly at, analyzing how their lips pull back and their teeth bare to the camera, predator posturing as if their blunt front teeth were the sharp canines of lonely wolves. They are ready at a moment’s notice to expel that anger with a scream, a curse, a rant, a rage that is definable by how acceptable it is for men to be the ones who rage at what does not serve them.
Inversely, the same three stock photos of women when I search for female rage. Eyes squeezed shut, a demonstration of their blind fury. Wrinkled skin around the forehead and nose accentuates the tension and the anger bubbling just beneath their skin. Similarly postured, equally as distant, female rage is directed at how the world has failed to serve them. Female rage is the righteous answer to sexism, to injustice, it is pushing back against how women have been made to feel invisible by every system that works against them. Female rage becomes another sub-category of where rage is directed to if it is not flowing from the mouth of a man.
I am left behind; I am caught in the crossroads of rage. With a foot on either side of the binary, I balance the scruff on my face with the smooth front of my throat that will always lack an Adam’s apple. Masculine rage has not become me; weekly injections of testosterone did not change my temperament to that of someone who punches walls or shouts for no good reason. I am exactly as I was before, only more settled inside my skin. Female rage slides off my skin too easily to even try to stick; I lack the lived experience to identify correctly there, either. Rage fails to stick a label to me, and I fail to find a foothold in rage.
THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS I COULD GET ANGRY AT. I AM TRYING TO GET ANGRY AT THEM. I AM FIGHTING AGAINST APATHY AT EVERY TURN, WILLING MYSELF TO FEEL SOMETHING BEYOND EXHAUSTION. WHERE IS MY RAGE? WHERE IS MY RAGE? WHERE IS MY FUCKING RAGE?
I lay this out concisely, I try to spell out what rage is and how it is perceived by our culture, not for your benefit, but for my own. What does rage look like in a person who was socialized in a female body to never experience it? What does rage look like in a person who has come of age in a world where instability runs rampant? What does rage look like in a person whose existence is being threatened at every turn?
I am trying to figure out myself, and what that looks like. I think it looks a little like this.
There are parts of me that want to respond to you with a level of sympathy. You were hurting. You were struggling to cope with this country and the religious extremism and everything they are trying to do to us. This country wasn’t kind to you, and in turn you couldn’t be kind to it.
Other parts of me react in a tired sadness. Another shooting. Another group of young children lying dead on classroom floors, with more still in tears as they flee a place that is no longer safe. Another set of families entrench in grief and mourning that has become so commonplace to the rest of us it feels like nothing to write these lines.
I feel these devastations in small doses, these blips on the radar of my exhausted subconscious. Out on the rim, a mass moves in, a submarine coming up for air, my frustration breaching the surface with a scream.
Because HOW COULD YOU? Out of anyone to be the next school shooter - a sentence I hate that I have to type, even though it’s true - it had to be you. At this exact moment in the perilous fight for our existence, it just had to be you. Why? Why now, why at all, WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU FUCKING THINKING? WHAT DID YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN? WHAT WERE YOU HOPING TO ACHIEVE? YOU ACHIEVED NOTHING YOU ONLY BROUGHT ON MORE HATE MORE VITRIOL MORE DAMAGE ALL YOU DID WAS HURT. YOU HURT PEOPLE ON THE WAY OUT AND YOU WILL CONTINUE TO HURT COUNTLESS MORE AFTER YOUR DEATH.
In my worst moments, I start to wonder if you’re a false flag. A product of some devious scheme, a bomb primed to explode at precisely the right time you’re required to make the fires of these hateful flames burn brighter. I stop thinking of you as a person who desperately needed help and start trying to justify your actions in a way that will fix things for the community you left to survive in the wake of your death. It would place you firmly on the side of our oppressors like every other grifter and pundit and I could find peace with that.
That isn’t the truth. The truth is messy, the truth is frustrating, and the truth hurts.
THE TRUTH IS THAT YOU WERE A PERSON JUST LIKE ME. THE TRUTH IS THAT YOU SHOULDN’T BE A SCAPEGOAT, YOU SHOULDN’T BE ANY DIFFERENT FROM ALL THE OTHERS WHO NEEDED THE HELP THEY NEVER GOT. YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO MAKE MISTAKES WITHOUT BEING PUT ON THIS PEDESTAL, WITHOUT BEING SINGLED OUT FOR YOUR FAILURES.
Because the truth is that I don’t know who you were or why you did what you did. I will never truly know. All I know is that your actions are a tremendous splash in a body of water already fraught with the sharp teeth and barbed lies of the politicians and the right-wing think tanks hellbent on eradicating us.
HOW DID YOU NOT REALIZE? HOW DID YOU NOT REALIZE THAT YOUR ACTIONS WERE EXACTLY WHAT THEY HAD ALL BE WAITING FOR WITH SUCH EAGER EYES? THE OPPORTUNITY TO POUNCE ON WHICHEVER ONE OF US STEPPED OUT OF LINE AND SCREWED UP IN SUCH AN UNAVOIDABLE WAY THAT THEY COULD USE IT TO PAINT ALL OF US TO BE AS SICK IN THE HEAD AS YOU WERE. YOU STUMBLED ONTO THAT GOLDEN PLATTER AND DELIVERED YOURSELF TO THE STARVING WOLVES THAT WE HAVE ALL BEEN TRYING TO FEND OFF. AND WITH THEIR APPETITES WHETTED, STAMINA RENEWED, CLAWS OUT, IT FURTHER THREATENS TO TURN US FROM FIGHT TO SCATTERED FLIGHT. FUCK YOU FOR GIVING THEM THAT POWER.
My jaw hurts from clenching it as I scroll through article after article that uses your wrong name either out of ignorance or malice; I no longer care to discern the difference. Out of all 128 mass shootings that have happened so far in this first quarter of the year, I cannot sink into apathy over this one. My frustration is misdirected like the right-wing legislators; we both are focused on the shooter instead of the broader systemic issues plaguing everything about this situation and all the ones prior.
BUT I HAVE A HARD FUCKING TIME CARING ABOUT THE BROADER ISSUES. All I do is watch these legislators parade your death around as the tipping point for every awful thing that will be coming our way. I wonder how long I will force your hands to carry the blame just as you carried those guns.
You were hurting. YOU NEEDED HELP. I know this. I KNOW THIS. You frustrate me anyways. I HATE YOU ANYWAYS.
Clenched Jaw / Frustrated
Raised Biceps / Aggressive
I cannot get myself to leave my bed and drive the distance to the gym unless I’m fueled by pure fear. The history of my community reminds me that in the years past, we had to have the strength to throw bricks and punch cops and run for our lives against those who sought to kill us off. Those times are arising again, and regardless of my current safety, the walls are closing in around my siblings in further corners of this country, and I cannot allow myself to be complacent. To find that energy, I have to have the strength to carry it. I have to get stronger so that all this rage I am discovering that is boiling underneath my skin doesn’t overwhelm me.
THIS IS NO TIME FOR PITY OR SELF-HATRED OR BODY IMAGE ISSUES. I WILL REPEAT THESE WORDS WHILE STARING AT MYSELF IN THE MIRROR CRITICIZING EVERY ASPECT OF MY BODY. THIS IS NOT ABOUT LOSING WEIGHT OR BEACH BODIES OR SLIMMING DOWN. THIS IS THE TIME FOR SELF-PRESERVATION THIS IS THE TIME FOR SURVIVAL THIS IS THE TIME FOR STRENGTH.
When I cannot get myself to take a step into the gym, I let music carry me first. Guitars and drums louder than anything I typically listen to roar in my ears with unbridled aggression and remind me why I’m here, what my purpose is, who I’m doing this for.
I sweat through another push-up, and I think about all the ways the world pretends to care about me while turning a blind eye to true injustices. I think of the corporations that plaster our flags on their products while funneling money into the pockets of politicians who pass laws to get rid of us. I think of cops protecting pride festivals in one city while a trans woman gets killed the same night and nothing is done about it. AND I KNOW THAT PROGRESS TAKES TIME, BUT HOW MANY MORE LIVES NEED TO BE LOST BEFORE WE MAKE A CHANGE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION?
My arms burn with the strain of curling a dumbbell, but I know that it’s important I KNOW THAT I AM THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SHAPE MY FUTURE. I CANNOT SIT AROUND AND LET THE WORLD DECIDE FOR ME. APATHY, COMPLACENCY, THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT LEAD TO DANGEROUS PEOPLE STEPPING OVER ME ON THEIR WAY TO THE TOP. I CANNOT BE COMPLACENT AND LET THEM WIN.
Otep Shamaya shouts at me: DO WE SIT STILL, UNDER ATTACK? OR DO WE START PUSHING BACK?
I respond while adjusting the weights on the overhead press: I’M TERRIFIED TO PUSH BACK BUT I KNOW THAT I MUST, BECAUSE THE FEW PROTECTIONS I HAVE ARE ALREADY BEING RIPPED AWAY. THEY ARE ALREADY HURTING THOSE AROUND ME. I CANNOT IN GOOD CONSCIOUS SIT IN SILENCE ANYMORE.
Laura Jane Grace asks me: DOES GOD BLESS YOUR TRANSSEXUAL HEART, TRUE TRANS SOUL REBEL?
I shout back: MY ANGER COMES FROM A PLACE OF LOVE, OF PROTECTION, OF RADICAL CHANGE. MY ANGER IS BLESSED BECAUSE I AM ANGRY AT A SYSTEM THAT HATES ME. MY ANGER HAS BEEN BUBBLING IN MY BLOOD FOR LONGER THAN I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO UNDERSTAND IT, AND I AM GOING TO USE IT RIGHTEOUSLY.
My arms are sore. But I keep moving forward. I have no choice. There is no safe place to stop at this point.
Barely a quarter into the year, and almost five hundred bills dealing in anti-trans legislation have been introduced throughout the various states. Every day there are more and more bills. Every day, the conversation around trans people gets more and more dangerous.
THEY WANT ME DEAD.
OH HB68: To enact sections 3109.054, 3129.01, 3129.02, 3129.03, 3129.04, 3129.05, 3129.06, and 3129.07 of the Revised Code regarding gender transition services for minors and to name this act the Ohio Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.
I WILL NOT WASTE YOUR TIME EXPLAINING HOW THESE LAWS ARE CAREFULLY CONSTRUCTED MESSAGING MEANT TO APPEAR PROACTIVE AND PROTECTIVE WHILE THEY ARE TARGETING CHILDREN. THEY WILL MOVE ON TO ADULT AND ALL FACETS OF TRANS EXISTENCE VERY SOON. IN SOME PLACES THEY ALREADY HAVE.
IN HB1524: Birth certificate information. Provides that the gender listed on an individual's birth certificate and permanent record made from the birth certificate may not be changed.
I HAVE DONE ENOUGH OF MY SUCCINCT EXPLANATIONS. MY WORDS REACH THE INDIVIDUAL BUT NOT THE LEGISLATORS. NOT IN PUBLIC HEARINGS, NOT IN THESE ESSAYS. THE TESTIMONIES OF BRAVER INDIVIDUALS HAVE NOT MANAGED TO REACH THOSE HATEFUL HEARTS. EVERY DAY, I FEEL LIKE I AM FAILING BY NOT SHOUTING LOUD ENOUGH. AM I LOUD ENOUGH NOW? AM I ANGRY ENOUGH YET?
FL H1421: Prohibits persons & entities from expending funds for reimbursement for specified clinical interventions; prohibits person's biological sex from being changed on birth certificate; prohibits gender clinical interventions for minors; authorizes certain persons to refuse to participate in gender clinical interventions; prohibits health insurance policy & health maintenance contract from providing coverage for gender clinical interventions.
YELLING IS NOT ENOUGH WITHOUT ACTION. THIS ESSAY IS NOT ENOUGH WITH OUT ACTIONS BEHIND IT. I CAN ONLY HOLD ONTO MY ANGER FOR SO LONG BEFORE EXPELLING IT, AND PUTTING IT INTO WORDS JUST DISINTEGRATES IT. I HAVE TO ACT. I MUST ACT.
SC H3730: Amend The South Carolina Code Of Laws By Enacting The "Milestone Act Of 2023"; And By Adding Chapter 141 To Title 44 So As To Prohibit Health Care Professionals From Making Referrals For Or Providing Gender-transition Procedures Or Services To Anyone Under Twenty-six Years Of Age; To Prohibit The Use Of Public Funds For Such Procedures; And To Create A Criminal Penalty For Violations, Provide For Professional Discipline, Allow A Private Right Of Action, And Authorize The Attorney General To Enforce The Chapter.
THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION. THEY GROW BOLDER WITH EVERY BILL INTRODUCED. I WATCH SOCIAL MEDIA COMMENTS PROCLAIM THAT WE SHOULD BE STRIPPED ENTIRELY OF OUR RIGHTS AND LIVE OUR LIVES CONSTANT FEAR FOR DARING TO EXIST AS WE DO. I HAVE TO EMBODY ANGER TO KEEP MYSELF MOVING. I HAVE TO EMBODY ANGER TO STAND TOE TO TOE AGAINST EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO HATES US. I AM ANGRY AT THE BROKEN SYSTEM OF DEMOCRACY THAT ALLOWS THIS PERSECUTIVE BEHAVIOR TO PERSIST. I AM SO FUCKING MAD THAT I AM EXPERIENCING THIS KIND OF HISTORY BEING MADE, AND I CAN ONLY HOPE THAT I CAN CONTINUE TO BE ANGRY ENOUGH TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
Wide Eyes / Hateful
VOICE / ANGER
I AM ANGER AND I AM LOVE. I AM FURY I AM VIOLENCE I AM PERSISTENCE I AM HERE I AM SCREAMING I AM FIGHTING I AM FIGHTING TO BE HEARD TO LET MY SCREAMS LEAP OUT FROM THE PAGE AND STRIKE YOUR EARS WITH ENOUGH FORCE TO RESONATE IN YOUR SOUL AND RESPOND TO ME IN KIND. IF YOU WILL BE HATEFUL TO ME THEN I WILL NO LONGER TURN THE OTHER CHEEK AND ALLOW YOU TO SPIT ON IT. I WILL NOT RESPOND WITH THE SELF-DESTRUCTIVE ANGER OF THE INDIVIDUAL, I WILL RESPOND WITH STRENGTH THAT COMES FROM THE ANGER OF HUNDREDS OF UPLIFTED VOICES, THE KIND OF SOLIDARITY THAT IS BUILT ON COMMUNITY AND JUSTICE AND LOVE. IF I MUST RESPOND WITH LOVE THEN I WILL RESPOND WITH THE LOVE THAT PROTECTS MY OWN AND LEAVES YOU IN THE COLD. THIS IS NOT AN AWAKENING THIS IS AN UNCOVERING OF WHAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN BURIED DEEP WITHIN MY HEART. THIS IS NOT MASCULINE RAGE THIS IS NOT FEMININE RAGE THIS IS ANGER SEEKING JUSTICE. THIS IS ANGER PUSHING BACK AGAINST EVERY BIGOTED LEGISLATOR AND RELATIVE AND STRANGER WHO HAS HURT SOMEONE I STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH. THIS IS LOVE AND ANGER EXISTING AS ONE RIGHTEOUS FORCE. THIS IS MY ANGER.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harper Wood is pursuing their BFA in Creative Writing at Otterbein University. In between staying engaged in current events and the fight for queer liberation, they can be found playing with their cat, playing video games, and writing stories to escape from here. They are still working on finding their anger.