I never used to be angry. I would actually often think to myself when I was younger that it was rare for me to get angry, I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt the emotion of anger. I would feel all of my other emotions though. I was explaining to someone recently how I was such a happy child who never got mad, I was telling them how I find it weird how I never got mad but now I’m normally angry.
They asked me, “When did you start to get angry?”. That was a good question, I had never really thought to ask myself that question. I think I was scared of the answer.
I went though my memories of my life in my head trying to think about what had happened. My answer was, “Late 2020”. My ex boyfriend and I had started dating early May of 2020. I never went against what he said, I never got mad at him. He was always mad at me though, or himself. Mostly himself but he took it out on everything and me, which he said was his everything. He crossed every boundary that I had, any said boundary, or boundary that was common sense. He didn’t respect my mental or spiritual boundaries. His favorite boundary that he always broke was the physical, my physical, my body. I didn’t know how bad that relationship actually was, I thought it was just a bit of his anger that got in the way. I only realized that he was manipulating me, gaslighting me, and draining every last bit of happiness I thought I had, months and months after he went to jail. I kind of knew what he was doing but I really didn’t think it was that bad. It was worse than terrible. He cheated on me, I only knew about one and then I kept finding more and more proof of him betraying that trust too. I keep finding more peoples stories about him, they text me telling me about how they and my ex had a thing while we were in a relationship but he lied to them too and betrayed all of everyone’s trust. People reach out and still tell me how uncomfortable he had made them in the past.
He knew how scared I was of anger because of my past and he used it against me, I told him everything and he used everything to hurt me.
I didn’t know that what he did to me was rape, I had no clue, not even when my friends asked. I only knew it was rape when I opened up about why for some reason sex scared me to my boyfriend, and then I told my mom.
So basically, I have a shit ton of trauma from that awesome ex.
He would constantly be mad and start terrible toxic fights and twist his words every which way and make them last forever and it be about the tiniest thing that wasn’t even bad. Even when we broke up he wouldn’t leave me alone, he only left me alone when he went to another state and got locked up in July of 2021. I was “crazy” when I was seeing how the relationship really was, but he just convinced me that it wasn’t that bad, that I was bad. He mind-fucked me so bad that I didn’t know what was real or made up, I wasn’t allowed to express myself but I wasn’t allowed to hide anything or hide my feelings. All of my feelings were valid but he never let them be valid, apparently I was the one invalidating him. I was forced to feel but at the same time I wasn’t. So after months and months of trauma that I didn’t yet know was trauma I started to fight back during arguments, I would get so upset with him.
It’s months later now, months since I’ve seen him and I’m still angry. But not just angry, I feel everything, frustration, sadness, anger and rage. I don’t feel happiness though, which is a shame. I get in good moods but the smallest thing will set me off and I’ll get so aggravated and it turns into rage which most of the time ends in me crying because I can’t handle how angry I get.
Most of the time I have no clue why I get so angry, it’s as simple and someone rubbing me the same way for more than a few seconds, or the sheets of a bed are too messy and not tight, I don’t understand it.
I can feel the rage everywhere, I can feel my thoughts, I can feel the anger in my forehead from sobbing, I can feel it in my stomach from clenching so hard, I can feel my heart drop from a memory, I can feel the rage in my temperature, I feel like I literally start to heat up. And I can feel it in my hands, on my knuckles, I can feel my hands craving the pain and excitement of punching a wall. I feel my hands afterwards stinging, or bleeding.
I used to be a very happy child, even with everything going on. Hopefully I will return to that state of happiness, I doubt it but I believe that words have power.
But at least I know when I started to get angry.
True’s Short Stories 