Getting Back Up, VIII: Fire, the Differing Flames

After the car, I finally was ready to get back up. Of all the horrible things to lose, the Universe granted me the easiest thing I could cope with. I was lucky. All the work I’d done which had done no good was finally ready to fall into place. It happened when I was most ready to address it. I was lucky. That my terrible diet and lack of exercise, my explosive high blood pressure didn’t kill me while I waited for my opening to start moving again—that too was me being very lucky.

Onto my face I went, and I stayed down for about six hours. It took that time for the reframing and tools to click into the places in me they were designed to fit. And it took that time for my fire to flare up.

That’s really the third component of my recovery. Anger. Or something akin to it. I think there’s two aspects to anger. One is a vigorous, aggressive affirmation of life. It’s the desire to yell, “BRING IT!” at the top of your lungs when something challenging needs doing. It’s the desire to leap into an icy pool, or jump into something new. There’s terror, there’s exhilaration and there’s a terrible desire to LIVE through it all and take part. It drives you out into the storm to face the wind and rain. For me, it’s the Morrigan present in the pounding blood in my temples. It’s the creeping tingle up my spine, along my arms and up around the back of my head. It’s the sharp intake of breath, eyes widening, nostrils flaring, back straightening as I’m preparing to spring into the fray.

A second aspect to anger is the affronted, outraged desire for violence. But both spring up when the blood begins to pound. For me one aspect is anger turned on concepts, the other upon people and things. The one points me up and out into the world with vigor and joy, the other points me down and directedly, rigidly inward with malice. If not inward to my center, into the center of another person. The one is like a hunting animal, alert, alive. The other is a brooding, revenge-obsessed thug. Separating the two is challenging. But I can't think of another way to describe the first fire, other than to say, it too, is anger. And I'm harnessing it.