Anger

I have learned over time how to express anger. It’s taken me a while to figure this out. For the longest time I have thought that expressing anger meant that there was going to be an aggressive confrontation, which scares me. I am afraid of all forms of confrontation; I’m not sure what my reason is. However, expressing anger is vital to our mental health. It is just as important as expressing all of our other emotions. Stuffing emotions, especially anger, can result in an eventual burst of emotions. Emotions will come out at some point.

Mania is a very tough subject for me. When I’d go through the manic episodes it was very painful. I’ll admit, after I dealt with it in therapy, I just wanted to forget about it, but I know that’s not right for our readers. So, here goes… 

I deal with mania a lot. When I would get angry, anything would and could set me off. When I would get set off, it was very difficult for me to come back down to a normal state of mind. It was almost like an out of body experience. I could almost see myself getting angry and would be thinking, “Why won’t you calm down?” It was heartbreaking. 

As I weave in and out of social justice spaces at the University of Kansas and its town, Lawrence, I regularly track what conversations are most prevalent and determine what the culture and nature of social justice rhetoric is around me. “Intersectionality” and “respect” are often thrown around in social justice conversations here. Not respectability, but respect for the lived experiences of marginalized groups as authentic and real. I fully appreciate these concepts as central to my experience as queer and bipolar.