Why I'm angry: A story of how I became what I am today.

I am usually a rational person. Aggressively so even. One friend in college told me I was "Abusively Sane", so completely grounded in an unembellished world view that it made other people uncomfortable. But at my core, I am a deeply angry person.  Someone on here said that, if I told people about my anger, they would respect me for it.  I don't believe them. But I'm gonna do it here and we'll see what happens. If you want shiny stories about happy lives or over coming adversity and well adjusted, positive world views, then look elsewhere.

The earliest memory I have of it was my sister nearly dying.  She fell off a small plastic jungle gym onto a concrete floor, head first, when she was maybe 2 years old.  Something like this thing

She only fell a foot or two, but she landed right on her head. I have no real memory of what went on after it; they took her to the hospital. I heard later from my father that they were really frightened, they thought she might die. But she lived. She had a swollen section of skull on her forehead for years. It's gone now, vanished when she hit puberty, and there seems to have been no permanent effects of the fall. She's a smart girl, a great artist and she's grown up to be beautiful. She made me a bracelet out of string once, that I wore continuously for years, even though I only saw her occasionally.  When it finally broke, she got a tattoo on her wrist to match it, because me wearing it like that meant so much to her. 

My memory of that fall was of grabbing at her legs as she went over the edge.  She jokes that I pushed her, trying to get rid of the competition in the family. I laugh. I'm terrified that I might have. I might really have been angry enough to push her. I don't know, I can't remember. 

My school career was a paradoxical one.  I've always been good in school, usually without even trying. I coasted through classes with near perfect grades, but I was always being suspended. It was at least once a semester, sometimes more. 

In preschool it was because flipped a desk and threw a chair across the room. Some kid had taken a project I had done and was claiming it as his own. I remember it still. His head was strangely round, with close cut fuzzy hair, an upturned nose and a mouth too big for his face. I remember him taunting me, that too-big mouth open. It's become a caricature in my mind, distorted by the years. The teacher, some tall black lady with similarly close cut hair, was taking his side. She was scolding me for lying. Lying about doing my own work.  When it came it just bubbled up, like a geyser going off. I flipped the desk as I stood up and threw the chair at that kid before I could even process what was going on. I was almost as surprised as he was.  The teacher told me to go to the principal's office. I remember she said it through clenched teeth. They were very bright white, and contrasted heavily with her skin. 

In first or maybe second grade I told a girl that "I hoped she got anthrax and died". This was sometime directly after 9/11 and in the wake of the anthrax letter scares. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks

You see, I was never popular in school. An introvert, known for good grades and thus ostracized, nerdy, given a pair of glasses far too large for me, I was almost a sterotype. These girls, there were two, were just some of a few people to get their kicks out of harassing me.  I wanted them to leave me alone, to stop tormenting me for no reason, so I just repeated something I'd heard on tv and walked away. An hour later I was at the principal's office with the cops asking me questions. The girls had squealed,  of course they had, and some bright spark in the office thought that a first grader might be a terrorist. I got a few weeks suspension from that. The girls who had been harassing me for weeks? Nothing. It's a pattern I became quite used to.  They could do what they wanted to me, and I couldn't do anything. I hated them. I sat in class and ground my teeth, staring at them. 

Later in the year, we had a white elephant gift giving thing for Christmas. I actually managed to get the thing I wanted from it; a bottle of sparkling cider. I was young and for some reason I really wanted it. Don't ask me why. I was happy, I can remember that much, probably very visibly so.  I should have seen it coming, but one of those two girls from before decided that she wanted what I had.  Or rather, she wanted to deny me the thing that was making me happy. I could see it on her face, a smug satisfaction as she pointed to me. I protested. I asks her not to do this. I  yelled at her. The teacher told me I had to give it up.

I hit her with that bottle of cheap cider.  Sprang right out of my chair and just clocked her in the jaw with it. I remember a blur of a face with wide surprised eyes as she fell. She deserved it.  I still believe that. This wasn't some random attack, this was retaliation for countless abuses. No one else was going to help me and words wouldn't stop it anyways.  I threw the bottle into the wall after hitting her, shattering it and spraying glass and cider all over the place. I think I yelled something at her, but I can't remember it. That was another few weeks suspension. 

 It only made me more angry. These flare ups, these moments of violence, were just the points where I couldn't control it any more. I think that some of them were justified. But the truth was that I was always angry.  A cold sort of dispassionate hatred that made me stay away from people. I hated them, or rather I hated how effortlessly happy they were.  They occupied a golden field far away, someplace I could see but never go. They wouldn't let me in. I wanted to be there with them, to no longer be the butt of the joke, the target of a shared malice. I was jealous, am still jealous, of them. And that frustration at my own predicament them quickly became anger at them. 

School went on. I got put into advanced classes because I was out performing everyone in my grade. My father read me things like lord of the rings as bedtime stories when I was very young, so something like "Animorphs" was a bit beneath what I was used to. It was a mixed blessing. I got my first real friends out of those classes, other introverted nerds who were ostracized from the rest of the student body. I clung to them so tightly, they were the first people who liked me that didn't have familial obligations toward me. They wanted to be around me because of who I was, even with my flaws.  Of course, being further separated out of the general population meant that the problems they caused me only got worse. I got attacked several times, and I generally never knew why. I think it simply was because I was different. Maybe my place in those classes made other kids feel inferior? Maybe I occupied a position they wanted but could not reach, like they did with me.  Maybe our hate grew in symmetry. 

There was a zero tolerance policy for fighting, of course. Which meant, effectively, that if you got into a fight, even if you didn't raise a finger and just let them beat you, that you were punished just has harshly. Sometimes worse.  That first fight, a kid a grade higher than me attacked me with a t-ball bat, and the aftermath of it taught me only one thing: If I am going to be punished for getting beaten up, then why would I not fight back? If I am going to be hurt and then punished, why wouldn't I hurt them back?  Which wasn't to say I was some kind of great fighter holding back against them. I still lost most of the time, I was a nerd after all. But I would break a nose at least.  When they dragged us to the office, at least both of us were bloody. 

By the time I reached sixth grade, I was a mess. Chubby, blond hair, bowl cut, oversized glasses, wearing tribal print button up shirts or ones with flame prints on them.  I almost can't blame people for picking on me; it's painful to look through the old photos and see myself looking like such a goddamned idiot. Our past selves are always jerks to our present selves.  Despite looking like the most non-threatening stereotypical nerd I had gained a reputation. You can only get into fights so many times before it becomes what you are in other people's eyes. 

But I still had those friends of mine. Kids who liked what I liked, who didn't make fun of me for who I was. I had reached that golden field that had been so far away.  I didn't mind the attacks so much anymore, being bullied wasn't so bad when you had people to be with. It was being alone that made it intolerable. When I graduated to middle school, I though that even if this all stayed the same, even if the fights  and the ostracizing continued, it wouldn't be so bad as long as I had those friends. 

It didn't turn out like that of course. 

Thats enough for one post I think. Some people have shown interest so I'm gonna continue this in another post a bit later.