Why do I Have so Much Anger Inside Me?

I was a very rebellious teenager. My Mom used to say I was so angry. I didn't see that. I was just having fun. I began drinking heavily, (binge drinking) every weekend when I was 13. Alcohol soothed my social anxiety and brought all this power I kept hidden from everyone to the surface. It melted away my inhibitions and when I was drinking I felt free. I still feel that way.

Then in high school I lost too many friends to count mostly through them drinking and driving. I had a best friend die from a shotgun wound one night after we had been at a party together. Then, at 17, I was in a really bad car accident. One of my best friends was driving and a drunk driver went through a stop sign at 60MPH (approx 100Km/hr).

My friend ended up in a coma for weeks and had a severe brain injury from the crash. I still hear the sound of a gigantic tin can collapsing and buckling when I think of the crash. Our car bent almost entirely in half from the impact, trapping my friend in the car. I remember the driver of the car that hit us crying over top of me, reeking like alcohol, saying he didn't mean to do it. He was sorry. It was too late for that.

I was in shock, trying o get my friend out of the car, seeing she was barely alive and injured myself, I was frantic. When the police came I just kept saying over and over again, " I want my Dad, get me my Dad". Who is your Dad?, the police officer asked. Staff Sgt. X I replied. He looked sad, scared and shocked at the reply. It is strange how my Dad was the one who hurt me the most, but he was the only one I knew would protect me too.

I do not understand that dynamic. How can someone be both the terrorizer and the protector? The dismissive bully much of the time, but the one I turned too when I was really in trouble?

The ambulance came and I was still hysterical, because my friend was still trapped in the car. I didn't know if she was alive and no one would tell me anything. They strapped me into the ambulance gurney and at that moment I think I heard God say everything would be alright. I was sure it was God, and I calmed down immediately. I still wonder if I halucinated God.

I suppose "alright" is a relative term. My friend survived the crash and came out of her coma, but she was a completely different person. She began having massive mood swings and personality changes from the trauma to her brain. She was never able to graduate high school, or work again. That accident changed me in a way that is difficult to explain.

I think it was the culmination of so much loss over a short period of time; 3 friends dying in a car crash, a best friend shot and killed and then another best friend changed by less than a second of poor driver judgement. I became angrier, wilder, took risks that I would never have done prior to those things happening. Then my Dad left my Mom and I lost it.

That is when rage set in. I was enraged, not by his leaving, but by his untruthfulness and his unwillingness to explain himself to his family. I was enraged that he could just leave us so easily without an explanation. How could he be a family member for so long and then suddenly decide not to be without any acknowledgement as to what the rest of the family felt about it?

That was all a long time ago. I don't know why I still feel so much anger. I have been trying to think all day about why I become so angry now, as an adult. I feel hurt and annoyed by somethings my Dad foes now...but mostly we are seperate people living seperate lives. I will never be close to him. I get that, but something insde me wants so bad to have him say he loves me and cares about me. I feel angry that will never happen.

I realize today that all my anger comes from expectations. I expected more of myself in life, more of my Dad, more out of life. I didn't expect to be stopped in my career tracks by this illness, or end up on disability, or afraid of my own shadow. I always expected I would be strong and powerful. I expected to be good at what I did.

Buddhism talks about letting go of expectations, wants, desires. In letting go of these our anger should melt. I am not a material person. I do not need much, but I still believe if I care for, respect and love others, as a human being I deserve to be cared for and respected and loved in return.

Today I was thinking I need to learn that life is not fair, that bad things happen to you, even if you are a good person and that all those stupid platitudes, like the harder you work the better off you will be, or the more you give, the more you get, were written by people who were probably just as worried as me about ending up nowhere an nobody in life. That is really scary.