A meditation on anger
By: Marjorie Steele
Tags: Anger, Essay, Family, Meditation, Spirituality

I tried to patch things up with my brother. I really did. That, of course, was part of the problem: having any expectation of change.

I reached out to him a few days after my visit with the grandmothers. Offered to chat on Skype, which we hadn’t done in about five years. He was always eager to have an audience, and loved getting me embroiled in emotionally charged debates about whatever political or theological rabbit hole he was currently falling down — which was one of the reasons I had severed contact for so long. So I thought my casual outreach was an olive branch, and expected it to be treated as so. Classic mistake.

He emailed back and told me that he wanted me to talk to his young mentee who was involved in his MLM business about his latest insights on theology and herbal health first. Before my brother and I talked. So I would have “context”.

“Oh ok,” I replied, “or you could go fuck yourself. Have fun still being crazy.”

Mission=fail.

We did end up talking after that. And I tried to do the whole “I forgive you” thing where in the movies when you say the words, some magical cathartic transformation takes place. But there was no magical transformation. Just a lingering sense of danger, and a dulled sense of disappointment that things are still the same.

I’ve written about it before, but I should probably take a moment to mention that my brother is the reason why I maintain my boundaries so fiercely. And also why I’m prone to bullying bullies. Self-diagnosed as aspbergers with a history of violently enforcing his obsessive compulsions (which, as children, included asserting dominance over me, who he perceived as not being adequately disciplined by my parents), my brother is, as a therapist would likely tell me, my core wound.

I talked to him a few weeks back. He was talking to mom on Skype when the family and I arrived Friday night after a long work week, and demanded to talk to me. When I sat down to say hello, he immediately launched into a 5 minute soliloquy about his neighbor’s living situation. When I told him I really didn’t care to hear much about his neighbor, he switched gears and invited me onto his podcast (he’s a voluminous creator of content), and started talking about his “news publication”.

“Isn’t it funny that we both became writers?” he pauses briefly to muse, in as close as his tightly constructed demeanor can come to an intimate, familiar tone.

Then he launched into a new 15 minute soliloquy about a conspiracy theory which has been published on his publication about government-sponsored groundwater contamination in Michigan which makes residents angry and irritable —

“Which would totally explain why dad was so angry all the time, you know?” he asserts without stopping to breathe.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “Dad wasn’t an angry, irritable person. He was an irreverent hippy.”

But he continues, undiminished, telling me about the story published on his site which, as it turns out, he hasn’t read or edited. Finally, as I look to see where my husband and children have run off to, I say:

“Is this why you had to talk to me? To tell me all about your neighbor, and conspiracy theories about groundwater, and to remind me how little you know about industry best practices?”

“There, see what I mean?” he says eagerly. “There’s the anger and irritability, right there!”

“Oh go fuck yourself,” I said, slapping the laptop closed.

I think it’s a hard thing to understand for people who’ve never experienced narcissism or sociopathy in those close to them. Those who are familiar with experiencing emotional abuse can appreciate the hopelessness of the cycle that’s kickstarted merely by engaging.

How do you let go of anger and fear towards someone you keep barred out of your life for good reason?