Seeing red

Anger flooding my veins. So hot and thick it invades my body with it venom. I can hear the sound of the blood in my ears. My hands are shaking. They clench air and round into fists. My knuckles turn white as my fingers squeeze into the meaty flesh of my palms.

My breathing catches as I mull over your pointed words. They bounce around inside my head and join in the chorus of everything else I have ever deemed wrong about me.

I can see you standing there, smug. You know your words hit home and you relish the pain I find myself in. The very knowing that you are satisfied with yourself speeds up the lethality of the anger racing throughout my form.

You have no idea what real pain feels like. The kind that breaks you out in cold sweats in the dead of night. And all you yearn for is someone to breathe on the back of your neck as they hold you and whisper the things all children need to hear when bathing in such fear. You know nothing of the agony that comes with such pain as everything in you craves death. You beg for it as though that will somehow be the mercy you have sought all these years. And then the anger comes. It rages forward to ward off the pain and fights fiercely to protect its ward. You.

Anger becomes your savior now. Your knight. Your blanket when all becomes cold.

Anger is what sweeps away the tainted memories and fever dreams of childhoods marred with despair. Anger is what keeps you alive and stokes the fires deep in your belly to move the limbs up the steep incline that is life. No. You know nothing. You use words that cut and bleed me as though somehow seeing me bleed makes me real for you. To you. Of you.

And knowing they cut me open, exposing all the wires and trinkets that hold me together is what truly brings forth your glory. Seeing me cringe as my anger slips forward as the mask I wear in the face of all you created. No. You know nothing. You love this. You love seeing my face change from something so quiet and peaceful it couldn't possibly be real. And you dig your nails into my arms in hopes of invoking this very red hot rage you now see coming forward. You wanted this. To see what it looks like when my eyes fill black and my mouth sets to a grimace. When my words come out in some twisted snarl as I pull forth every hateful thing I can find and use them as a battering ram to break you open.

You love this part because then you see that deep down I am no better or worse than you. We are equals. And you can sleep easier at night knowing I am not on some platform higher than you. I am not sleeping peacefully at your side dreaming of a future neither of us will achieve. No. I am here. In the dirt, in the mud, in the grit with you. And you know nothing.