I read something last night that made me very angry.

That sentence alone —I read something last night that made me very angry— is something I’ve never done before. What I would usually write is something like this: I read something last night that made me very sad.

Or, I read something last night that upset me.

Or, I read something last night that frustrated me to no end.

Or, That’s ridiculous, you have no right to be angry over something so stupid. Stop it.

Or something more convoluted, like “I read something last night that made me angry, but then I thought it through and I wasn’t angry anymore.”

Anger, in general and directed at me, and especially coming from inside myself, has always terrified me. It’s something to be done away with as quickly as possible. Usually that means turning it into something else, changing the word itself from “angry” into “sad” or “frustrated” or “upset.”

That doesn’t get rid of it, though. What that does is turn it into something else that attaches sticky hands to your innards and stays there making you feel awful and shoving other things aside. I finally realized, a while ago, that the only way to get rid of it is to look at it and say its name.

Then it just sits there and eventually turns moldy and disappears. Like everything else.

Being angry is no more powerful than, say, being happy. So late last night, after I read something that made me very angry, I sat on my porch swing being all pissed off. And eventually the pissed-off-ness went away, on its own and in its own time.