Anger - Part Two
I have been looking at ways to unblock anger and heal the child aspect of ourselves. One way that we can do this is through writing. I had not intended to share this piece as it was intended to be a purely personal piece of therapeutic writing. However, when I finished it, I was compelled to write part one of “Anger,” and so it seemed entirely right and proper to include it.
This vignette was written in response to a dream I had. The dream itself was visually horrific, but there was no fear there. The images were brutal and upsetting, but it was also peaceful and un-panicked. When I woke up I knew immediately that I had been processing deep emotions unlocked via a recent therapy session.
There are also resonances with another story I wrote about 20 years ago called “The Fool and The King.” I plan to publish that on this platform at some point. In the meantime please read on.
There is a diatribe of filth that lurks within me. A leper colony of hateful thoughts, a structure of pockmarks and fissures, weak and rife with decay. I feel it crawling, dragging, inching and scraping its torso of tattered skin across bare rock. There is pleading, a pathetic pleading, loss and grief and all, and fear and judgement and this is the worst of me. This is the thing that I have lived in fear of all this time. A monster reduced to rancid filth; a hateful entity living inside my thoughts, wrapping itself into every part of my intent to poison my progress with failure. This is the rotting heap that has plagued me for so many years, finally exposed in the light of truth. This headless beast of death and lonely murmurings, a sad pathetic creature cradled only by neglect and misfortune.
I sit on a rock by the river and ponder these images salvaged from the dreams of dying men. Dreams of flesh split wide on shoulders where tenderness once fell. The masculine made weak by lack of love, lack of calm and goodness, a lack of will to be, burned by the determination to endure. The water ripples and runs, flows fast and tumbles over stones and rocks and earth and channel. The river runs relentless on its course and peaceful meditation is mutated into steely thoughts of harm and self annihilation.
One day I will no longer see my children. One day I will no longer breath the air. One day I will never more look and feel and think and taste and touch and speak and write my words and colour life with my me-ness for all to see. One day I will no longer weep or hurt or try or fail or laugh or bite or touch or kiss or hold or be or do or become anything other than the slow decomposition of stuff.
The creature slumps down at my feet at the entrance to the cave. A cave of shadows where the darkness eats the walls and floor and ceiling with ravenous ardour. A pungent cloud of burning and plastic and faeces causes me to gag and puke. The creature shudders in sympathy and looks at me with shining black eyes so large as to be a single aperture like a toppled hourglass. Hourglass eyes counting each grain of suffering across the years, now staring into me and pleading. The sands are running out.
I remove my jacket and bunch it up into a pillow like arrangement and look into the face of this broken part of who I never was. It tries to speak with a mouth so unused to words, all that it can do is croak and whine, and wheeze and dip its head in shame. “I am sorry you have suffered,” I say and lower the jacket onto the face of this poor soul. I press the fabric firm into its mouth and form a seal around the lips and rotting nose. The creature’s thrutching against the pressure is sudden but not difficult to suppress with extra exertion. I shift one hand from the jacket and hold its shoulder flat against the dusty ground. The creature mumbles muffled terminal moans through the heavy cloth. The struggling becomes less violent and all the air is spent and the body begins to wane. It feels like an age for the energy to be all gone and for life to expire. I focus all my thought on nothing, on the oblivion place where only spirits wander in godless, godlike stature. I am there with him, I pass through with him, we are in the black river that runs beneath the world and he is gone.
I feel the pressure lessen as my muscles relax and there is a sense of peace, a sense of something terrible but right. “You are me now,” is all that I can utter. A meaningless thing to say perhaps, but it is right, it is true. I spend a lifetime sitting there, I do not look upon the body, it is nothing now. I turn my bowed head to look at the black cave mouth from which this creature bore itself. The cave is dark and beckoning. There are secrets there to be explored now the fear is gone. Now that the suffering is ended. Now that I can proceed without the poison of paternal rage flowing in my veins. I slowly rise and turn towards the cave. I can hear the river running. The world is awake and now. I slowly walk toward the dark and disappear inside. We are free.
From the other side of the river a pair of keen white eyes blink in the forest gloom. There is a small black figure there, in colored robes and smiling. The figure taps the trunk of a towering beech tree with a long polished staff and turns to walk along the river path. As he disappears from view the world returns to as it was before, as it ever was. Bright eyed murmurings from the undergrowth.
I have been writing for about an hour now and this time has produced parts one and two of this treatise on “Anger.” There is so much more to share and explore, but I will leave it there for now. If you have any questions or comments please make them in the comments section or DM me. You can also email me at info@driftwoodstudio.co.uk.
Wow very powerful! Sounds like you were able to process a lot from that dream. Looking forward to the next piece :)