When You Realize the Bully Has Always Been You.
Growing up, I can only remember two situations in which I felt I was “allowed” to be angry.
First, when fighting with my family.
Looking back on every house I’ve lived in (and having moved almost every year until I went to university, I’ve lived in many houses), the one constant in all of them was the frequency of the air in each and every home: frenetic. Alight. Gyrating from voices yelling to their max.
As frustrating as I’m sure it was for my parents, and as frustrating as it was for me, who — fulfilling the role of “peacemaker” — only yelled if I felt there was something to yell about, yelling wasn’t risky. No matter how many fights I had with my sister, or how much I yelled at my mother, while there were consequences (isolation, grounding, and/or being made to apologize), I was never afraid of expressing my anger because I learned that I could yell day in and day out — all of us could — and I would still be given food, shelter, and love.
The second situation in which I was allowed to be angry was when standing up to bullies — though the fact of the matter was I never had to actually do so. I was homeschooled much of my life, and so the imagined opportunity to protect a fellow classmate from getting their lunch money stolen, head flushed down a toilet, or any other number of…
