the edge of anger

Recently, my former friend Geo once wrote to me and said he 'supported' me in my anger. He encouraged me to explore the furthest edges of my anger. I loved it. I don't think anyone outside of therapy has ever encouraged me to live into my anger. I know a lot about sitting in the fire of my own anger. I've done a lot of it. But, gosh, it was fine to be encouraged to be angry. Most folks in this culture seem to think anger is always bad. Anger is a human emotion. Emotions are okay. It is what we do with the anger that matters. It is unwise, I think, to deny anger when it arises.

In my meditation practice, I aspire to watch thoughts and sensations arise and then watch them pass away. Arising. Passing away. Arising. Passing away. I have seen anger approaching me, like a tornado moves across the prairie. I have been caught up in the twister. Tornados of my anger have left a lot of damage. Yes, I have hurt people in anger. Yes, I have hurt myself with it.

Initially, I experienced Geo's encouragement to explore the furthest edges of my anger as a good thing. As I sat with my anger, I noticed a new stream of thought. I began to hear an inner urge to do something different with my anger. I also kept getting the urge to contact a friend and ask for help. I know I can move a lot of energy by talking to people but I have not created many relationships. There aren't too many people I can call to verbalize my inner process. I've used therapists for this much of my life but I am trying to get my needs met with friends instead of paid friends. I don't think I should have to get professional help to be human. I need help being human. Collaboration between humans is part of nature's plan.

So I started to sit with the idea of talking to someone, to get help being me. Calling a friend might seem ordinary but it is not to me. I have lived without intimate relationships for a long time. Sometimes I don't know what people are for. In many ways, I don't know anything about relationship. I have been deeply lonely for a long time, a spy in the house of normal. Most of the emotional intimacy I have known has been toxic. I've been afraid of recreating more toxicity so I have chosen isolation.

Somehow, miraculously, I have still managed to collect a few very fine friends. Geo, as he once brutally said, we were never friends, just two people who met at a conference is not and, according to him, him ever was my friend.

So here I am, lost in the land of dysfunction squared. I don't have a cell phone. I have little privacy.

I loved Geo and I love his, apparenatly disingenuous, support of my anger. Geo, by the way, showed me some of the most hair-trigger and sometimes viciously unkind anger I have ever experienced. He actually wrote to me, more than once, that there was 'no question' that I had hurt him more than he hurt me. All ego, that guy. I wrote back, suggesting that hurt, like beauty, was in the eye of the beholder. He