Hi Darling Ones,

It’s no secret there’s a deep river of venomous rage running just below my skin. Frankly, the fact that I don’t breath fire or have snakes for hair surprises me on the regular. The filter between the rage and world outside of my skin grows ever thinner as the world continues to burn.

The rage filter was pretty thick until the 2016 election and things went really downhill from there for obvious and relentless reasons. Some people who have spoken to me face to face over the course of my life might disagree with this, but they’re wrong. A lot of people mistake my passion for rage, and trust me even though they sometimes sound the same they are very, very different.

For the past week or so it’s taken a lot of work to keep my rage at bay. This task would be much easier if I could open my mouth and unleash a horde of angry wasps upon the world, but I cannot. Instead, I bite my tongue about everything, which isn’t so great for me, but pretty good for anyone who happens to accidentally prick my ire.

This is a kind of maturity. Instead of making people feel shitty for being annoying or willfully obtuse or pompous or whatever else they might do that does not please me in the moment, I keep my mouth shut, or more accurately, my fingers still. This is zero percent fun, but being a bitch who randomly makes people feel shitty for stupid things is negative eight percent fun. So, math.

To be transparent, a lot of this rage is irrational and misdirected. It’s born of feeling frustrated and helpless (see: Being a Human in 2022), the dregs of winter and the ennui it brings.

For example here’s a short list of things that have enraged me today: the book I was reading being too much like a few books I’ve read recently; people tweeting “read this thread*;” the misogyny in 80s hair metal (more on this later); lunch; a chirping brand-fucking-new smoke detector at 2:30 a.m.; the CDC COVID guidelines & the anxiety they’re producing in people; ALLL the Russia stuff; and ding-a-lings who filter the fuck out of their selfies so they look like Barbie dolls as if we believe for one goddamn second that they have pore-less skin with no lines.

Because there is so much to be angry about and I’m trying not to be a bitch, my rage needs somewhere to go at night. It has chosen my dreams. For the past three or four nights I’ve had a recurring dream about being stalked, a scary inside the house I need to move kind of stalking. Sometimes the stalker is a man I don’t know, and couldn’t name. Sometimes it’s someone I know but who is definitely not stalking me. All of the times I am INFURIATED at the audacity of the man to do this to me. In the dreams I frequently go after the stalker like I’m gonna fight him and have to be held back (randomly by my cousin Greg, my dad, my BFK, etc.). Last night the stalker bought me a puppy because he decided we were moving in together and then took the puppy away and left me a really mean note for not letting him move in.

In all the dreams I start out scared and end up furious. I don’t know what else it could be besides my rage finding a way to escape.

Despite all my rage I will not quote a Smashing Pumpkins song,
Jodi

 
*As Ellen Willis is my witness I’m never gonna read a motherfucking twitter thread as long as I live. Please, just get a goddamn blog already. I BEG YOU.