# 78 The Anger Refugee

An image formed in my mind as I was thinking of the angry men I’ve encountered in my life, an image of a Chinese foot binding shoe and how it physically deformed and crippled female children.  My mind swooshed, linking the image of the physical damage done to female children via foot binding to the (modern) psychological damage done to the psyche of a growing young male, his feelings twisted and malformed by psychological restraints. In my psychobabble shortcut, these impossible restraints happen to young boys and men via demands of family or society in the suppression of expressions of love, fear, or emotional vulnerability when outlets for these hurts through healing talk and sharing is also suppressed. Again with the psychobabble, I think of how women are thought to be better at sharing and talking out feelings than men, either young or old.  I am drawing John Wayne stereotypes here and I ask your indulgence.

Modern Moms are working very hard to not use templates of the past, trying to deeply alter what has come before their shot at making a difference in the sons they raise with so much love and hope. I do not know how possible it is to rectify the past that lingers still, given our history and our prevailing culture’s grip on the idea of what it is to be a man.  My hope is that progress is being made but my thoughts turn back to the damage already done in the generations flanking my own.

Like so many women I’ve had up close and personal encounters with angry men. “What do you mean ‘I’m angry’?” “I’m not angry!” flying out of mouths as eyes bulge and red hues spread across brows, the intensity of sound beginning to bounce off the walls, gasoline tossed on a fire if you attempt to state the obvious. Holding silence as a buffer, you ride out this storm covering your own gut fear which is only a paper shield attempt at protection.

Not intended as criticism nor intended as excuse, from my safe distance of survival many miles and years  away from the fuse of past experience, I return to examine my conscience and my memories. Every day there are screen repeats I can watch to remind me of what I once intimately lived, and worked alongside, and saw repeated in the lives of women friends. We knew we were up against danger even if we had not been hit, always carrying the silent “yet” at the end of that thought. I carry sorrow and shame for myself and all the others, those who did not get to that “yet”, who suffered or fled, who did whatever could be done to shield themselves and their children. And I carry sorrow, shame, and grief for those who still suffer, for those who sometimes die.

The image of horridly malformed feet stays with me as I picture a hurt boy struggling to suppress his tenderness or his fear, told to be a man and suck it up, told to not ‘be a girl’. ( And yes, girls sometimes get similar treatment.) The psyche twists, confines itself to the required space, permanent damage done, and the questions hang: how will this manifest, what pattern will it take, who else will suffer as a result? Most often we can never get to “Source” which becomes embedded in these lives. No matter how much  faith I have in talk therapy, such damage runs as deep as an underground river. To those men and to the well-intended professionals working hard to repair the damage: please, please try and keep trying.

Throughout my life I witnessed angry men rising in their jobs or professions , seeking solace in power over others, a balm or elixir for wounds from their own histories or experience over time. In our work places, in our government, in our homes, and as fathers to our children, they are still there and still rising, the damage of personal histories played out in so many ways. Without answers, I only have this image of the bound foot released, yet far too damaged to ever be completely repaired.

I live my life purposefully far distanced for a very long time, no longer willing to participate in the intimate,  up-close-and-personal, bravery of partnered life. I am an anger refugee. But of course my own anger spurts out on occasion evidenced by loud four letter words when there’s no one to hear. There are many of us who have chosen such self-imposed exile over the pain of daily confrontation. We watch from the sidelines. We know it when we see it and we grieve for what we have all had to bear.