Firestorm

There is rage inside me , big rage. A firestorm, it feels like.

It has been present for the past few days, as I've moved beyond the fears, insecurities, and shame that I've been swimming in and out of for the past couple of weeks. A fiery ball in my belly and chest, filling me with a sense of power, of choice, of self-protection and self-love.

In the past, I've often suppressed my anger, fearing that I'd be abandoned if I expressed it, that others couldn't handle it, that it would be dangerous. After all, I grew up with the unhealthy version directed towards me in the form of ridicule, blame, shame, punishment, and abuse. As I result, I disconnected from my own anger, unwilling to fully own and step into it. Instead, I internalized it, stewing, smouldering, feeling intense contempt and hatred but having no real outlet for it. As a result, I often became depressed, passive, weak, helpless. Today, I see it manifest as being passive-aggressive, making snide underhanded comments and cutting remarks without being direct and owning my own feelings. I've been blaming others and putting my anger on them.

As I've sat with my anger for the past couple of days, I've noticed the urge to go away, to move out of relationship with others and go deal with it by myself. What I'm realizing tonight is that bringing this anger into relationship is what true intimacy is about.

Anger is a gift. It allows us to move from being a victim to acknowledging our own power and vitality, making us equal, alive, human. The victim disowns the anger, the perpetrator puts it on others. The emotional meaning of anger is that boundaries have been crossed, and now they need to be set. The real use and blessing of it, the healthy expression, comes when we embrace it, own it, and stand in it.

That is what I'm choosing to do now. It's my anger, not someone else's. It's my truth. It's my power and my life force. I wrote yesterday how, as men, we need to take our raw sexual energy (which is closely linked to anger), and align it with our hearts and higher selves. This is how we begin to heal. This is how we claim the divine masculine. This is how we become love. By embracing all of it, by relaxing into it, by opening to it, and by loving through it, in all forms. In this way, it becomes conscious. The more I do this, the more alive, the more aroused, the more turned on, the more passionate that I feel.

I am alive.