Angry Bird

I was an angry teenager.

My sister used to call me “angry bird” after the mobile app because of my tendency to frown deeply when something upset me. Growing up, my siblings and I were taught that saving face was a priority. Angry bird was not in line with that concept.

I remember there being so many reasons to be angry. Much of my anger stemmed from struggling to understand how I fit into the world I saw around me while feeling the pressure to make my parents proud. As the third child and elder daughter, I always felt simultaneously like a misfit and a peacemaker, altogether too old for my age. I somehow grew into a mediator role between my siblings and parents all while being unable to process my own inner conflict.

The anger was how I processed fear, shame, and anxiety. Anger was easier to feel and harness than constantly feeling afraid and less than. Anger felt productive. Shame was suffocating.

And I felt shame deep in my bones. I was the obese kid in class. I wasn’t smart enough. I was athletic but not athletic enough. I wasn’t attractive enough. And then there was the cherry on top, believing I was intrinsically disordered for liking other girls.

When I felt I couldn’t bottle the anger anymore, I needed to find an outlet to release it. I didn’t want to hurt others by lashing out on them so I hurt myself. I learnt fairly quickly that I had to find more discreet ways of doing so to avoid unwanted attention. The physical pain was temporarily cathartic but the scars that developed gave me another reason to feel ashamed of myself. It was an endless cycle. I didn’t feel I had anyone to share my anguish with so I put on the facade of a well adjusted teenager.

I never found it difficult to make friends. I found it difficult to find friends who were able to peel back my carefully nurtured layers of protection, friends who I could trust to understand where I was and support me through it. I didn’t need a posse, just one or two would have been enough. It took a while but I found them.

I learnt how exhausting wielding anger as a defence was. If I got into a heated argument that couldn’t be resolved, I would feel completely spent after. Not only would I review the unpleasant exchange repeatedly in my mind, but I was physically tired out.

Imagine how your body feels when you’re mad. Your heart rate increases, you might find it difficult to focus, your head starts pounding. Can anger be productive, a force for action? Yes. We see people rallying around a cause because of an incident that upset them throughout the course of history. In the long run however anger as fuel is unsustainable, both mentally and physically detrimental.

With a lot of practice at understanding why and how I felt, I slowly began to stop instinctively substituting fear for anger. Having a good group of people around me also meant learning to trust others to support me when I needed help or a listening ear.

These past few years, I’ve been feeling that old prickle of frustration again at issues unresolved. Some of the people most important to me continue reacting adversely to a truth of mine. This time round I knew what the roots of my anger were. A strong sense of fear, dread, and helplessness at being unable to change who I am and enduring strained relationships with people I love.

There was also resentment at the realisation the future I was taught that I could have, had to be let go. It was drilled home in every aspect of life: get a good education, then a good job. Find a life partner, get married. Apply for a flat together and have children. The national dream of stability and a nuclear family.

I wanted to get married in my childhood church and host the wedding dinner in my mother’s old school chapel. If we could have bought a flat as a couple, I wanted it to be close to family. If I had daughters, I wanted them to go to the all girls school I went to. If I had sons, they would go to its brother school. I would maybe sit on the PTA and engage in the age old tradition of comparing my child to someone else’s.

What I wanted is run of the mill. But the barriers in place to do any of this back home are immense. The administrative and societal challenges insurmountable. The reality is that there would likely be a public outcry if I tried to send any daughter of mine to my alma mater. The reality is what I wanted is a fantasy.

So I create different expectations and new frameworks for what is feasible. I set about letting my imagined future go. As painful as it is, going about life with the misguided hope that maybe someone someday will extend you a lifeline isn’t a way to live.

I haven’t self-harmed in nearly a decade and I’ll have the scars for the rest of my life. They’re a reminder to be patient with myself and those around me, to be kinder. And now I know I have the rest of my life to look forward to.