Rage is its own form of pleasure
Date of writing: August 30 2023
This is, as is likely obvious, more of an essay than a poem.
This is, as is likely obvious, more of an essay than a poem.
I gave a boy a blue eye once because I was irritated by the noise he was making. I hit him really hard with one of his drumsticks; I snatched the thing from his hand, then brought it down right next to his eye with full force as though stabbing him with a dagger. Had I aimed only a bit sideward, he'd probably no longer have an eye at all there. I might have poked it right out.
Within that same week I scratched open a girl's arm during P.E. because she was bullying my friends. I just grabbed her arm and dug my nails right in before she even realized I was angry. I spent so much time screaming after that I didn't even realize I'd made her bleed.
Of course, her friends quickly labeled me a violent lunatic, though nobody else seemed to be too surprised.
I have always been an erratic and easily angered person. I will find myself fuming at the smallest things, shouting insults as I attempt to flay my opponent with my tongue.
'You're being mean,' my mother's favorite response to this goes. She'll look at me with dejected eyes, as though disappointed instead of just hurt, leaving no room for any more conversation. Sometimes she explains a little more. She tells me how cruel I am for saying these things. It rarely gets more specific than that. 'It really hurts when you say stuff like that. Your anger is far too personal to brush off.'
Yes, it is personal. Of course it's personal. If it were to be impersonal I would never target her. The louder I scream, the less she hears me. When I was younger she'd often deliberately upset me in order to have a reason to stop listening.
'You're acting,' she would say to me before I finally figured out what words to use, 'You're acting, you don't actually care about this. You're turning this into a show for the sake of it.' - as though she hadn't purposely sought for those very things she knew would make me kick and scream until my throat hurt from all the yelling for her to stay back and go away.
The anger never really exhausts. I think she may have been trying it to, at the time. Exhaust the anger like it's an animal, so that it can't do anything but lay down and rest. But it never did, not even once my body had. I'd pull it back to the depths of my mind and closed the doors there to just give her what she wanted, to be the version of her daughter she most liked.
However ethical her methods isn't really the point. I don't know what to do with ethics when it comes to her. They're useless. I just need to be right.
The rage it leaves is the point. Violence, my dubious companion in need. Once Apathy loses his effect, Rage is always there pleading to be let out. She is a feral thing with bloody teeth and bloodshot eyes, her hair messy like a crow's nest and her thin pale limbs tremble with anticipation.
'Let me, let me, let me,' she pleads. She shows me what she would like to do in lucid daydreams; she lets me hear the cracking of bones and the wet squishing of flesh being torn. She uses my tongue to begin shouting before I can stop her, apologizes furiously for her own behavior without stopping but really she's telling me, 'I'm sorry I'm too young, I'm sorry that your body is too weak, I'm sorry that I couldn't kill them.'
She isn't capable differentiating between minor offenses and bigger ones. She doesn't know the difference between the face of someone I love and of someone I hate. It's all so hot that it feels cold, so warm that iron bursts into two just touching it. I feel like I'm all made out of phosphorus, like anything could set me aflame, like I'm trying to manage loose gunpowder with nothing to aim it at.
I have to beg her to see that she's standing before a lover. I have to breathe in deeply to tell her that I can't snap her neck, that I can't hit her, that I can't scream or even sneer at her - that she's only my age, and that I'd scare her to death; that I'd hurt her. But Rage is me, and thus it doesn't feel that way. 'She hurt me first,' my gut says, 'She hurt me first and although I know I'm unreasonable, I feel justified, and I am only not doing what I want to do because no one will ever agree.'
She turns into a bored, buzzing sensation under my skin once Apathy manages to sit back on top. He agrees with her. He tells her that she's right, but that he can't follow pure destruction. 'Yes, you're right to be there, but that's not a solution.'
It's not really so much a conversation as it is a monologue. Both Apathy and Rage are just me. They're not so disconnected within me that they need to speak. They're not separate parts, and it's not so much dissociation as disassociation, which is the more deliberate attempt to distance myself from emotion; because my eyes are laced with Apathy and my stomach is full of Rage.
I know that Rage can be a weapon. She is not only Rage in the sense that she is anger. I think her furious passion about anger can take on many forms. She is concentrated malice. She is burning obsession. She is the content waiting to fulfill a long term strategy; she is the anticipated waiting that comes with a well-planned trap as you hunt. Give her a goal, and she is her own form of pleasure. She loves when the rest of me agrees that she is right, that she may do as she pleases. She is strategic and patient as long as there is the glimmer of satisfying victory where she can finally feel in control.
Controlling her never feels like real control. I feel like an agent of the perpetrator. I know that I really shouldn't lock her up, but I know she will steer me into ruination as soon as I open the cage to let her run free.
It's like I'm made to keep in passion in every form. I can't distinguish her from any other emotion, and if I can't recognize her in it, emotion doesn't feel sincere. I can pretend to be smaller than I am, to be a soft-spoken and terrified young child with large eyes and a trembling bottom lip and apologetic smiles. I can wear that act so convincingly that some people believe that it's me, that every other thing is a lie. But in even my true fear there is an undertone of spite. There is always something malicious, something vicious and something that doesn't like to be seen as innocent. It is raw and unfiltered. My usual showcasing of tears is nothing but a hollow imitation of what I've seen in those around me. I perfected it, I made it so convenient and refined that it's almost holy. People never continue to yell at me when I put it on. I am so well-loved when I pretend to be vulnerable and it makes me want to gag.
Even love feels like Rage. Sometimes I'm so overwhelmed by it that I can only imagine sinking my teeth deep into its source. I feel like a lunatic, with mad eyes fixated on my object of affection while I grin in a way that's too similar to an animalistic warning for comfort. The baring of teeth that's done when growling or hissing - for even joy makes me feel dangerous. I revel in it. I revel in feeling that I am me, that I am finally alive, that I can feel everything.
It's confusing sometimes. Anyone who makes me feel fascinates me, I want to be around them all the time, because I want to taste myself for longer, I want to feel what I'm really like, I want to hold on to passion. People I hate can be just as gratifying to be around as people I love. Fascination feels like the predecessor of pleasure, whether it comes in the form of anger or desire, and often I can't bring myself to care about the difference. I will pretend to love people I hate. I will seek for reasons to dislike those I love. I just want to feel, I don't want the restless pacing around that I usually have to do, I want to pour gasoline on the fire and watch it explode. I want to feel its heat and have it burn off my skin. I'd rather be filled to the brim with contempt than continue feeling bored with everything, all the time.
Within that same week I scratched open a girl's arm during P.E. because she was bullying my friends. I just grabbed her arm and dug my nails right in before she even realized I was angry. I spent so much time screaming after that I didn't even realize I'd made her bleed.
Of course, her friends quickly labeled me a violent lunatic, though nobody else seemed to be too surprised.
I have always been an erratic and easily angered person. I will find myself fuming at the smallest things, shouting insults as I attempt to flay my opponent with my tongue.
'You're being mean,' my mother's favorite response to this goes. She'll look at me with dejected eyes, as though disappointed instead of just hurt, leaving no room for any more conversation. Sometimes she explains a little more. She tells me how cruel I am for saying these things. It rarely gets more specific than that. 'It really hurts when you say stuff like that. Your anger is far too personal to brush off.'
Yes, it is personal. Of course it's personal. If it were to be impersonal I would never target her. The louder I scream, the less she hears me. When I was younger she'd often deliberately upset me in order to have a reason to stop listening.
'You're acting,' she would say to me before I finally figured out what words to use, 'You're acting, you don't actually care about this. You're turning this into a show for the sake of it.' - as though she hadn't purposely sought for those very things she knew would make me kick and scream until my throat hurt from all the yelling for her to stay back and go away.
The anger never really exhausts. I think she may have been trying it to, at the time. Exhaust the anger like it's an animal, so that it can't do anything but lay down and rest. But it never did, not even once my body had. I'd pull it back to the depths of my mind and closed the doors there to just give her what she wanted, to be the version of her daughter she most liked.
However ethical her methods isn't really the point. I don't know what to do with ethics when it comes to her. They're useless. I just need to be right.
The rage it leaves is the point. Violence, my dubious companion in need. Once Apathy loses his effect, Rage is always there pleading to be let out. She is a feral thing with bloody teeth and bloodshot eyes, her hair messy like a crow's nest and her thin pale limbs tremble with anticipation.
'Let me, let me, let me,' she pleads. She shows me what she would like to do in lucid daydreams; she lets me hear the cracking of bones and the wet squishing of flesh being torn. She uses my tongue to begin shouting before I can stop her, apologizes furiously for her own behavior without stopping but really she's telling me, 'I'm sorry I'm too young, I'm sorry that your body is too weak, I'm sorry that I couldn't kill them.'
She isn't capable differentiating between minor offenses and bigger ones. She doesn't know the difference between the face of someone I love and of someone I hate. It's all so hot that it feels cold, so warm that iron bursts into two just touching it. I feel like I'm all made out of phosphorus, like anything could set me aflame, like I'm trying to manage loose gunpowder with nothing to aim it at.
I have to beg her to see that she's standing before a lover. I have to breathe in deeply to tell her that I can't snap her neck, that I can't hit her, that I can't scream or even sneer at her - that she's only my age, and that I'd scare her to death; that I'd hurt her. But Rage is me, and thus it doesn't feel that way. 'She hurt me first,' my gut says, 'She hurt me first and although I know I'm unreasonable, I feel justified, and I am only not doing what I want to do because no one will ever agree.'
She turns into a bored, buzzing sensation under my skin once Apathy manages to sit back on top. He agrees with her. He tells her that she's right, but that he can't follow pure destruction. 'Yes, you're right to be there, but that's not a solution.'
It's not really so much a conversation as it is a monologue. Both Apathy and Rage are just me. They're not so disconnected within me that they need to speak. They're not separate parts, and it's not so much dissociation as disassociation, which is the more deliberate attempt to distance myself from emotion; because my eyes are laced with Apathy and my stomach is full of Rage.
I know that Rage can be a weapon. She is not only Rage in the sense that she is anger. I think her furious passion about anger can take on many forms. She is concentrated malice. She is burning obsession. She is the content waiting to fulfill a long term strategy; she is the anticipated waiting that comes with a well-planned trap as you hunt. Give her a goal, and she is her own form of pleasure. She loves when the rest of me agrees that she is right, that she may do as she pleases. She is strategic and patient as long as there is the glimmer of satisfying victory where she can finally feel in control.
Controlling her never feels like real control. I feel like an agent of the perpetrator. I know that I really shouldn't lock her up, but I know she will steer me into ruination as soon as I open the cage to let her run free.
It's like I'm made to keep in passion in every form. I can't distinguish her from any other emotion, and if I can't recognize her in it, emotion doesn't feel sincere. I can pretend to be smaller than I am, to be a soft-spoken and terrified young child with large eyes and a trembling bottom lip and apologetic smiles. I can wear that act so convincingly that some people believe that it's me, that every other thing is a lie. But in even my true fear there is an undertone of spite. There is always something malicious, something vicious and something that doesn't like to be seen as innocent. It is raw and unfiltered. My usual showcasing of tears is nothing but a hollow imitation of what I've seen in those around me. I perfected it, I made it so convenient and refined that it's almost holy. People never continue to yell at me when I put it on. I am so well-loved when I pretend to be vulnerable and it makes me want to gag.
Even love feels like Rage. Sometimes I'm so overwhelmed by it that I can only imagine sinking my teeth deep into its source. I feel like a lunatic, with mad eyes fixated on my object of affection while I grin in a way that's too similar to an animalistic warning for comfort. The baring of teeth that's done when growling or hissing - for even joy makes me feel dangerous. I revel in it. I revel in feeling that I am me, that I am finally alive, that I can feel everything.
It's confusing sometimes. Anyone who makes me feel fascinates me, I want to be around them all the time, because I want to taste myself for longer, I want to feel what I'm really like, I want to hold on to passion. People I hate can be just as gratifying to be around as people I love. Fascination feels like the predecessor of pleasure, whether it comes in the form of anger or desire, and often I can't bring myself to care about the difference. I will pretend to love people I hate. I will seek for reasons to dislike those I love. I just want to feel, I don't want the restless pacing around that I usually have to do, I want to pour gasoline on the fire and watch it explode. I want to feel its heat and have it burn off my skin. I'd rather be filled to the brim with contempt than continue feeling bored with everything, all the time.
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