A Maddening Condition
One madwoman considers our relationship with anger.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting mad.
Anger may not be the most flattering emotion — bulging eyes and contorting faces — but despite its ugly reputation, it can reveal unfiltered truth.
Sometimes our anger tells us we care.
Sometimes it tells us we’re scared.
Sometimes the message is more complicated, even a little confusing.
But anger never comes without a deeper mission and it won’t truly leave until we answer the question it always begs:
Why am I here?
We can resist answering for moments, days, even years — choosing instead to silently seethe, making anger a kind of companion and then —
Why are you so mad?
It pesters.
Frustration building, we may try to scare it off with explosive bluster, but anger is not easily deterred. It doggedly persists and not for just one answer.
It wants a whole damn list.
Anger reminds us: it’s never about what it’s about.
There’s always more to it.
And there’s far more to us than any one annoyance.
Getting to the bottom of it all can be messy, it can hurt; then one day — we realize
Anger can’t keep us safe.
For all the fussing, it suddenly feels okay to let go.
As anger exits it makes space for something new.
It may be action or acceptance, joy or even grief.
In any case, it leaves us to feel, to do, to heal.
This is, if we meet it halfway to begin with.
If we listen to what our anger is trying to tell us.
If we consider its lessons before being consumed by its fury.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting mad.
I think it’s human, perhaps the most maddening condition of all.
This piece and the accompanying sketch originally appeared in my column in the June 26, 2025 edition of the Perry Herald in Perry, NY.