Don't look back in Anger

Each month a friend and I take it in turn to chose a theme, to come up with something creative to post on Instagram. Usually I post a photograph. But this months, theme, chosen by my friend Jules 'Don't look back in anger', made me think about doing something different. Here is my contribution (shared here, because Intsagram is not good for long text posts, and try as I did, I couldn't fix the crap formatting.

Don't look back in anger:

“Don’t look back in anger”, they said. Your anger makes us feel uncomfortable. Your anger scares us.  Your anger is not needed. It is vulgar.

The truth is they don’t know what to do with my anger, it is too real. My anger is a reminder of what they failed to protect me from, from that which has deeply scarred me. The truth is, my anger helped me survive. My anger stopped me ending my life. My anger gave me the strength to make it to the other side. The truth is, my anger is a flag, it yells and draws attention to those that hurt me, to those that ‘got away with it’, there were no consequences for them. My anger reminds this society and the individuals in it, that they failed me, as they failed and still fail many others.

“Don’t look back in anger” they say, sipping their lattes and brunching away. Don’t you want to be happy? Can’t you move on?   Can’t you let it go, or forget about it? These demands, openly disguised as questions, make them as guilty as those who hurt me, who abused me. It makes them complicit in covering up the acts and shows them as colluding. They may as well have held me down those many, many times.

Don’t tell me to stop looking back in anger. Don’t. 

I am not responsible for your feelings of uncomfortableness. I am not responsible for your fear of my anger. I get it. I really do. The truth is, that you don’t know how to sit with my anger and my hurt.  That is ok, I don’t expect you to.

‘But, haven’t you been angry for long enough now?’ they ask.  Disappointed, I gently shake my head from side to side and reply ‘No’.

copyright matthew schiavello 2017