secondary

I’ve heard somewhere that anger is a secondary emotion, and that always makes me think about primary and secondary colors. My favorite color is orange and my mom’s is purple, so clearly secondary colors are more popular than primary ones in my family. Shades of anger, like frustration and proclamations of hatred, are also vibes my mom passed on to me, mainly as a teenager when we screamed at each other. I was allowed to be angry with her because she was angry first, sometimes at my dad and then at me for defending him, sometimes just at me. My anger in response was a secondary emotion, papering over the hurt that I’m pretty sure is normal for a child to feel when they’re being screamed at by their mom.

Anger is a powerful emotion; it feels so much better than fear does, even though both are reactions to outside influences. I acted on it too often as a little girl. Then again, my best friend was physically abusive so I was taught disagreeing resulted in anger and anger resulted in fighting. Two young girls who physically beat each other up were seen as troublemakers. That Grace was always the instigator, the one who turned a discussion into an argument and an argument into a physical fight that had me scratching and kicking and angry didn’t matter. Grace, what an ironic name for someone who destroyed so much of what was beautiful in my childhood. That was her name though. I don’t have the energy to fictionalize my musings on anger at the moment. She taught me anger was dangerous to express, although it was a lesson that took seven years to stick.

“It doesn’t matter who started it.” Get told that often enough, you start starting fights, since you’re going to be beaten up and yelled at either way. At least if you’re at fault, her anger towards you made sense, even if the adults’ anger towards you didn’t. You, me, pronouns are weird. Pronouns made me angry for most of my teen years also, since I was seen as a girl despite being a boy in my head, and my attempt to change the words used to describe me had my mom call me ‘it’ for three months. Now that resulted in originally anger that morphed into regret quickly, but I wouldn’t take back my anger at being called ‘she’ because if I backed down I’d never be believed. Mom relented once doctors confirmed I actually was capable of knowing what I wanted. That anger died alongside her resistance to accepting me.

With Grace, I ended the friendship by threatening to kill her after she tried twice to kill me, first by beating me with a bat and then by drowning me in a swimming pool we broke into. The second attempt, she must’ve regretted, since I certainly couldn’t have gone from drowning to being passed out on the concrete without her moving me out of the pool. We had broken in at night, no lifeguards were around. Still, swimming pools and her feet on my shoulders as she literally stood on top of me haunt my nightmares, even a decade out. My threat was taken seriously by the adults in a way her actions never were, in part because I fought back when she hurt me and she ran tattling to adults when I threatened her. That’s when I really learned my lesson about anger - expressing it never ended well for me. I had to pick my battles. Most of the ones I picked were gender-related, as written about above.

Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn - those are survival instincts that trauma often results in. Fight is associated with anger, flight with fear, freeze with hopelessness, and I don’t entirely understand fawning because I’ve never used it as a coping mechanism the way I have the others. Fawn is probably easier for people who can understand how they’re perceived, which my autistic ass can’t do.

I fought back constantly until I finally learned fighting back only hurt me more - it made me perceived as violent, unreasonable, angry, and those were traits that meant I would be ignored or punished when I was victimized. Flight, running, escaping, that’s what I tried to do whenever I was trapped after I came to that realization that fighting back hurt me more than it hurt my attackers. Flight had me attending university in another country, had me leaving, avoiding trusting anyone, especially those who said they were there to help me. But between the fighting of my prepubescent and teenage transitioning years and the flight from everything that was university, there was the freeze stage. I knew fighting back was pointless, and I knew that there was no escape, so I froze.

I’m still angry when I think back to how many adults failed to teach child-me about what was happening. Admittedly, I wasn't the perfect victim - still fail to be, especially since what one's supposed to do as a victim changes when the victim's a child versus an adult: children who fight back are troublemakers, adults who don't are “asking for it”. Somehow knowing what's wrong is taboo to teach children, especially if it isn't an adult hurting them or a clear cut case of bullying. Grace was my best friend - I wasn't a victim the same way a child being bullied would be. It was very much an abusive relationship but since children aren't taught they can be abused by other children, or that abuse can even exist in friendships, and especially since children are taught “it doesn't matter who started it,” both adults in my life and I myself didn't recognize it as one until after the fact. Part of why I wasn't able to see myself as a victim as a child was because of how angry I was all the time, at Grace, and how I expressed the same rage she expressed towards me back at her but it was never received the same way. Anger doesn't fall into the perfect victim narrative for children. That fact in and of itself makes me angry.

Was this a story? It's certainly about anger. I'll leave the rest for you to judge.