Trigger warning. This is part 1 of a 2 part piece on anger. This piece contains descriptions trauma and abuse that may be upsetting. You can read part 2 here (coming soon).
When Kamala Harris said, “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” I felt that.
In that moment an old white, cowardly, and useless figurehead talked over our current VP KH and disrespected her hugely. But she couldn’t react. Because if she did she would have been viewed as less competent than her stodgy, emotionless, robot overlord opponent. Any sort of reaction that could have been dubbed an outburst could have lost her the election she was enthusiastically campaigning for.
This isn’t a problem that is only found in the antiquated halls of our forefathers. This shit happens everywhere. It is ingrained in our society to keep little girls good. Women are taught to be pretty and quiet, because it increases our resale value. If we dare to express our indignation, we are automatically assumed to be unhinged, hysterical, inept, or immature. When a man has a similar outburst, he is typically seen as powerful, and is admired by those around him.
That pisses me off.
In my family, emotions were not things that were shared or freely talked about. My mom’s side of the family has endured generations of abuse, poverty, and trauma that nobody has dealt with. My grandma grew up in a poor working class family. She recalls having a special relationship with her father and her paternal grandmother as a child. When she was maybe 8, after her parents separated, she witnessed her father shoot her mother, her maternal grandmother, and then she watched helplessly as he turned the gun on himself. Her mother and grandmother lived, but her father did not.
She still sounds like a terrified 8 year old when she talks about it. When that anger about his loss starts to bubble up, she punches it back down and clams up almost instantly. She has gone her entire life without being able to properly express those feelings or work through them. That is tragic.
That traumatized little girl grew up to be a mother of six. No one ever taught her how to identify her emotions and how to deal with her shit. So it isn’t really a surprise that she didn’t teach any of her children how to emote properly. Mental health care wasn’t something that they ever talked about in those days, (there’s still a huge stupid stigma attached to it, right) so she never received any mental health care. Instead, she gifted her babies with her trauma in the form of substance abuse and physical, and verbal abuse as well. I say this with love, but all six of her children have grown up to become varying degrees of dysfunctional.
It turns out that the mental health professionals refer to this as generational trauma.
What the fuck am I talking about, right? So, we know that trauma is an emotional response to a super shitty event. It could look like shock or flashbacks or any number of symptoms really. Generational trauma is when a traumatized little girl learns toxic behaviors and patterns to cope with her dad’s attempted murders and suicide, then unintentionally teaches these same behaviors to their children.
Reading about generational trauma was weird and kind of uncomfortable for me. Apparently unhealthy attachments and struggling with your emotions are very common in these situations. It felt really personal the way they described how children growing up in these toxic environments (like I did) tend to feel like the chaos is normal. They become numb to it, or unintentionally check out when times get tough.
That is something my partner has mentioned to me recently. If I feel threatened in a conversation in any way, I will quietly retreat inside my head and get lost in my own thoughts until it feels safe to come out again. It’s something that I think drives my partner crazy. It’s also something I have always done and never realized wasn’t the typical response. It never occurred to me that others might find it off putting. It’s nice to know after 39 years that there are reasons I am such a weirdo.
The good news is, I also learned that I’m not destined to be this weirdo who sucks at emoting.
I know that there are patterns I need to put a stop to. I am learning about myself, and what triggers me. I’m relearning my reactions to these triggers. It’s hard as hell for me to not scream at my children when I have told them twenty five times to get their shoes on. I get hella mad, but I don’t let myself blow up at them like my parents would. This five minute delay is a small problem in the grand scheme of things. I don’t want to damage them because they were acting like normal children.
Predictably, in my childhood home, anger wasn’t something we sat around the dinner table and discussed like civilized people. Instead, if my parents got angry they said the most hurtful things that they could think of. To each other, and to us kids. They were experts at using cruel words against us in a heated moment. There were also plenty of fists, bloody noses, and tears, too. They learned everything they knew about parenting from their parents, who were just terrible at their job, tbh.
I was so out of touch with my emotions that I didn’t realize what the feeling of anxiety was until I was thirty. I thought it was normal to feel on edge all the time because I have never not felt that way.
Lately, my life has been a series of increasingly formidable hurdles.
In the past month I have faced possible eviction, having a partial hysterectomy, and my stepdad (whom I share a complicated history with) is now in his final days, maybe weeks of his life suffering from terminal lung cancer. I’ve been sitting with a ton of anger, and ruminating on what to do with it.
I recently attended the funeral of my step grandmother. I’m not at all close to my step-dad’s family, but I went to show him some support because his circle is small, and sometimes it’s nice to do kind things despite your shared negative history. I was really surprised to find that when I got there and started talking with my four step aunts and step uncle that I was really fucking ragey.
All of these people were fully functioning adults when I was a child being regularly beat up like a grown man in a bar fight. There was one time when Aunt B witnessed me take a punch to the nose that resulted in a pretty bad bloody nose. I was twelve years old. I remember staring into her eyes while I was sobbing with tears and blood running down my face.
All she did was look away.
One time while visiting Uncle S’s house, my step brother and I told them what we were frequently dealing with. Instead of protecting us, they told our parents about the “terrible lies” we made up. So, we got yelled at and hit some more when we got home.
I hope I’m wrong about my atheist beliefs. I hope there is hell, and I sincerely hope those assholes rot there for a good long time. And, I also hope that someday I will get the guts to directly send this to them. Framed. So they can be reminded on the daily that they are actual pieces of shit.
Just typing this out I can remember what it felt like to be scared and alone, and I can’t ever imagine allowing a child to continue to live that way, for years. I don’t know how any of the adults who knew about our situation could even sleep at night.
I’ve also realized that I’m so incredibly mad at myself. I struggle with being gentle to my traumatized self. I want her to just get over it. I’m a grown, independent, bad bitch who is trying to do big things. I hate the fact that I’m still mad about this shit. I don’t like giving those negative experiences acknowledgement or validation because it feels like I’m giving my past abusers and neglectors some sort of satisfaction or victory by still feeling big feelings about it. But also, if I don’t work through these things. My memories will never stop triggering my frequent nightmares.
I kind of hate myself for always prioritizing others above myself.
Kayse’s musings on anger don’t stop here. Check out Part 2 (coming soon) for more on how she is processing her anger and trauma.
