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Reblogged from The Black Feminist Manifesto

I've been thinking about the word "angry."

Synonyms "mad," "upset," "pissed the fuck off." I've been thinking about these words as parts of my personal political vocabulary. I've been thinking about them in relationship to how everything prominent members of the Republican party say makes me feel. I've been thinking about them in relationship to the tears that fell from my eyes on the Red Line Wednesday while I read the introduction to Professor Perry's Sister Citizen, reliving the disgust and bitterness at the total lack of regard for poor Black American lives in the days before and after Hurricane Katrina. I've been thinking about them in relationship to how I felt about myself when I got an email last night from Change.org commemorating the one-year anniversary of Troy Davis's death and I momentarily could not remember who Troy Davis was.

I don't think angry fits. I don't find mad to be an appropriate expression of what I feel about these things. Upset is too paltry a word to encompass what I mean. Pissed off does too much work separating the meaning from the message.

I'm not angry. I'm outraged.

Let us presume for a moment that the opposite of outrage must be in-rage. In-rage is seething, festering, the-world-doesn't-give-a-fuck-about-me-so-I-don't-give-a-fuck-about-the-world rage. In-rage is starting to believe the lies the world tells you about yourself. In-rage is internalized racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia, ad infinitum. In-rage is fighting to fight instead of fighting the good fight. In-rage is the self-esteem issues of a whole people. In-rage is living in the now because you have no reason to believe in next year, or 25, or 40, as a reality which you will attain. In-rage can be bloody and violent. It can be quiet and cold. It can be fast, a million things all at once that don't make sense together or apart. It can tear a person, a people, asunder. 

I refuse to be overtaken by in-rage. I refuse to soak up all of the world's bullshit like a sponge and just carry it around, being heavy for the sake of being heavy. I deserve to be full of better things than these. So, I will exist in the world. And existing in this world means yeah, racism and sexism and classism and heteronormativity and you're-not-like-me-so-you're-wrong-ism will be flung at me from every imaginable angle, sopping wet and eager to soak me. I am porous, so not only will I be coated and covered by these things, but I will take them in. I have no choice. But when it becomes too much, when I am oversaturated by everything wrong with the world, I can make a beautiful choice. I can wring myself dry. Expel these things from the depths of me, wholly and irrevocably changed. I will expose them for what they are, spread their innards across these pages so that I can know my own. This wringing is outrage. It can be violent. It can be loud. It can come off as harsh or even militant. Those who don't know might even call it angry.     

There are, of course, people who insist that anger is never, ever appropriate. They are wrong. Anger is a natural human emotion, and as such has its place in our lives. Anger also has its uses.
Anger can drive us to defend ourselves instead of flee. It can drive us to defend others instead of stand by and watch, seeming to lend our approval to attacks on them. It can drive us to succeed against great odds. It can drive us to do things, good things, great things which we otherwise might not achieve.
Anger can also serve as a warning. When we get angry, it lets people know immediately that whatever they have done is not acceptable to us, that there is a real problem here, that they have hurt us. It draws a line: You may not treat me that way. And it does it in a way that no calm way of saying it can do.

(source) 

My friend J and I learned last night

that little things can make you inordinately angry when you're drunk and stressed out. And as we're graduating seniors who have theses to write and midterms to take and highly competitive jobs to apply for, stress is a given. Drunk is also a given. Thus, being quite rude or even yelling at our friends and loved ones and/or having full-blown emotional meltdowns may happen more often as the time between now and the beginning of April dwindles. Now that we have realized this correlation, we will try to be more cognizant and avoid potential molehills-that-could-easily-become-mountains-in-drunken-stessed-out-perspective, but for the next time or four we fail, consider this our apology in advance. We only hope the same thing will happen to the rest of our friends, so we can be even.

Reblogged from my friend M over at Too Good to be True

The two artists I have the most music by are India.Arie and Eminem

As such, the two feelings I'm torn between are:

"And if he ever left me, I wouldn't even be sad, 'cause there's a blessing in every lesson and I'm glad that I knew him at all." --India.Arie, "The Truth"

and 

"when someone seems too good to be true, they usually are. But see, when you're in it it's too hard to see..." --Eminem, "Spend Some Time"

Not sure I'll ever make a decision between the two feelings. Not sure it's even possible. I am not sure how I'm not supremely angry or if I'll stay that way. I'm not sure what to believe about the past four months, except that for the sake of my sanity it can't be nothing. Not sure how long it will take to shake this sick-to-my-stomach feeling or to rebuild the ability to trust. Not sure you ever really know a person. Not sure how to make myself stop caring about him. Even less sure than I ever was before (not including the past three months) about what love ostensibly is. Not sure I'll ever really understand what happened here. 

I am sure I'll waste lots of time and energy trying to. I am sure that I feel humiliated, like I have been made a fool of. I am sure I'll throw myself into my independent work like nobody's business in a thinly veiled attempt to hide the fact that my life doesn't make sense to me anymore. I am sure that I was happy (albeit a different kind of happy) before this and I can be happy again after it. I am sure that there's a lot to be learned from this situation.  I am sure that I will never again undervalue the importance of complete and brutal honesty, especially when the truth hurts. I'm also pretty sure that I am (un?)fortunately too good a person to repeatedly flame him on this blog, because like I don't deserve this, I can't make myself believe he's a terrible enough person to deserve that, so I will try to avoid it (after this).

A DirectTV blimp just passed overhead saying "Change your life." My first reaction? I don't want to. But sometimes you don't have a choice. 

I will leave you with an excerpt from my favorite play, Ntozake Shange's For Colored Girls who've Considered Suicide/ when the Rainbow is enuf:

"My love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face. [...]

My love is too sanctified to have thrown back on my face.

My love is too magic to have thrown back on my face.

My love is too Saturday night to have thrown back on my face.

My love is too complicated to have thrown back on my face.

 My love is too music to have thrown back on my face.

And you remember that the next time some man tries to walk away with all of your stuff. 

I know that's right. Or says I'm sorry a million times.

...

 It's ok. I asked myself how I could let that happen and I realized that I was missing something. Something so important. Something promised.

I suppose what I'm left with now is me time. More than time to analyze what happened here, I suppose I should go find what I'm missing to make sure it never happens again. Not that I'm blaming myself--mistakes were made on both sides--but something needs to change.

How did I get here?

An addition to the list of things I really can't stand...

The malicious invasion of privacy at the hands of someone you considered a friend. Not necessarily even a particularly close friend; even just someone you thought you were cool with.
Princeton can be so difficult when you're a minority in every way. When your entire adjustment process consists of how to stop feeling so conspicuously different whenever you walk into a room. Not everyone--in fact, I would argue that perhaps not even the majority--of such people ever learn how to blaze an appropriate path between self-segregation and self-denying-integration, how to navigate Princeton's cultural landscape in ways that leave them feeling truly happy and fulfilled. I have always considered my friend R to be one of the few that has done this successfully. I have always looked up to him as an example of what I want my experience here to be like: breaking down the posts of the fence separating social spheres, being an example of what it means to embrace diversity without neglecting to take time for solidarity and brotherhood. 
I suppose "They" were right when they said the grass is always greener on the other side, though. Maybe he never actually broke any posts down to make a doorway; maybe he's been trapped on this fence for years, never really getting a foot on the ground on either side. Maybe I am too?
What are you supposed to do when you dedicate your life and heart and soul to an institution and your efforts go systematically unrecognized? What do you do when you construct your life around creating a family out of people you've met only recently, embrace a new identity regardless of its problematic history (and semi-isolate yourself from your brothers in so doing), only to get all the love you've poured into this thing thrown back in your face by a few members of the family you've worked so hard to be an integral part of? This isn't what he was working for. This is not what WE are working for. Regardless of sobriety levels, disrespect is disrespect. Banter is not cute when it is no longer immediately recognizable as playful. Time, love, dedication, sacrifice...these things are too precious to have thrown back at us. 
We are still waiting for the day when the world--when even our friends in the world--recognize that one can be intellectually interested in something without identifying with it; or even that a truly open and spiritually connected human being should be able to identify with the emotions and difficulties of any other human being, by virtue of nothing more than their shared human experience. We are still waiting for tolerance. We are still waiting for respect. We fight for this institution every day, in every possible way...when will it stop fighting us? How can I reconcile my love for this institution with the raw...hurt, anger, and downright betrayal I feel on his behalf? How do I show that I stand with him without marginalizing myself within this family I love so much? Should I even try to keep him from disowning us? Is there any reason to?

Most of the time...

I love being a woman. I love that I can be soft while being strong, that caring always wins out over somewhat-overbearing. I love that I can be identified by my laugh, that I'm not afraid to draw attention to my curves or draw paw prints on my breasts. I love that it's okay for me to always want to give/receive hugs, that I can pepper my speech with the words "love", "honey", "dear", and "darling", that I can give myself freely and wholly to as many people as possible without any repercussions. I love the slop of my collarbone and the curl of my hair, and I love how it feels to be the only one who knows I'm wearing sexy underwear. Most of the time, I love being a woman. 

But on days like today, when I wake up needing to take 2 maximum strength Pamprin and 3 Advil, which are currently doing nothing to combat cramps from hell and the fact that every muscle in my body aches as I try to move, and all of the soda at the luncheon is caffeine-free, and I'm hungry but I don't have the energy to even eat a bowl of soup, and I can't trust how I feel because it might just be the hormones feeling, and all I want to do is sleep when all I need to do is work, I must admit, I get angry. I get angry that men don't have to deal with this shit. I get angry that I have to go spend a bunch of money at CVS on pads and tampons and pantyliners and spray. I get angry that my vibrator is going to lay around unused and unusable for the rest of the week. I get angry that the world expects me to keep on keepin on and be so fucking strong when my insides are literally crawling out of me. I get angry that the world doesn't recognize exactly how many sacrifices women make to keep up appearances and keep everything running smoothly. 

I still love being a woman. It's society that makes me angry.

Grrrrrr...

Being angry at someone for the first time is an interesting experience. I suppose it becomes more and more interesting depending on how long you've been close to the person before having to cross this bridge of anger. One of my closest friends on campus is really flaking out and making my life difficult right now (I'm sure he doesn't mean to be, but regardless), and it's putting me in a really bad mood. It took me a while to realize that this funk I'm in is anger...this is what it feels like to be angry at him.  

Update to Letter 23

Just so you know,

I've gotten pretty sick of this. At this point, I'd rather have a new first kiss with someone else than a second kiss (second fit of kissing?) with you.

Do something to make this up to me, or prepare to feel...nothing from me. Nothing from me at all. A shell of a casual friendship, I suppose, because we have too many mutual friends for me to intentionally make things awkward.

Maya