Rage

So in my previous post, I mentioned something along the lines of having friendships on the rocks. In case I had any doubts, last night proved that point rather clearly to me. I have a friend, who I'll call [novel killer] (for her sake and my own) who I’ve gotten into fights with before, generally because of comments she says that come off as crass or racist. Last summer I started screaming at her when she made a comment about Native Americans before my mind had even had time to recognize that I was angry. On certain topics, we go together like oil and water… or maybe more like sodium and water.

Things have been okay for a while, but she slipped out some offensive comments about Hurricane Katrina, seemingly oblivious to her insinuations. It wasn’t so much what she said, it’s that she didn’t seem to think that she was doing any harm. Again, I started shaking before I even knew I was mad, but this time stayed silent. To no avail. The room was filled with my friends and displaying my anger like that was a sure way to kill the mood. I couldn’t look at anyone; I just stared at my feet and at the carpet, afraid that if I made eye contact with anyone I would receive looks of pity or contemptuous judging.

Things got worse. [novel killer] used a racist slur later in the conversation, for which she got rebuked and then apologized, saying it was an accident. How does one accidentally use a racial slur in this day an age? I was fuming. It would be one thing if she grew up in the South, in a family who was racist. But this doesn’t seem to be the case. Yes, she had family members who were racist, but so did I. It isn’t like she grew up in an area where she never saw anyone act any differently. This only made me angrier.

Which happens to be my fatal flaw. If hers is bold racism, mine is rage (or as I like to think of it, a terrible intolerance for intolerance). I have inherited a terrible temper, which my friend would be attributed to my Italian and Irish heritage. But it’s more than that. I’ve worked at not getting upset as much. When I was younger, the simplest things would make me cry or yell. Now I have to be pushed to the extremes to be made upset. But I feel like racism is an extreme and that I perhaps have a right to be mad. I’m a cultural studies student; I’m sensitive to this stuff. But reacting with anger won’t do any good – it’s too unpredictable. I can’t even control it. One moment I’m fine, then my blood is boiling and raging and my body is both weak and strong, shaking under pressure. I feel a little bit like the Hulk, filling the room with tension and pure, negative emotion. Thus I need to find a better way to deal with it.

Unfortunately, I don’t know what it is. I can’t rebuke her without getting upset. My friends, at least those present last night, didn’t leap to my aide to tell her she was wrong – and this perhaps angered me just as much as her attitude, their preference to pretend that it hadn’t happened and change the topic rather than face the issue head on. But ignoring the issue doesn’t work – it just allows her to think it’s okay and that she can get by with it. And I can’t tell her to stop talking – the difficult thing with issues like this is that people have the right to say what they think. And I know a great deal about feeling like my voice isn’t being heard – I wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite and cut hers off, as much as it might piss me off. The only thing to do is what I did last night – leave as soon as possible. I wasn’t feeling well anyway, I’d had a long day and I shouldn’t have been away from home for as long as I was. Unfortunately, when we talked about racism in school, they never applied it to what it might be like for one of your own friends to be racist. Right now, I’d like nothing more than to avoid the friend in question indefinitely. But it won’t work that way. My friends always plan group things and thus avoiding her would be avoiding everyone. And avoiding her won’t solve the problem – it will only make me look like the bitch that I probably am. There’s nothing I can really do, except let my temper cool and to write about it. Maybe once I’ve gotten it out of my mind, I can finally return to some state of normalcy. “Anger is temporary insanity,” it’s been said. I can see that, at times. But what if being angry feels sane?