Look at Me

Something has moved like a furtive shadow through the underbrush of my psyche all day. As the hours wound out, from time to time, an agitated, momentary rustling of leaves at the side of the road would startle me, but I pressed on. Then, as the sun sinks, quick and surprising, I know what it is.

It is anger.

And I am suppressing it. It has lived in me today as something I fear. Something I would neither release nor face. Something in the underbrush....that might bite me or break my neck... I don't want to know what it is I chanted subconsciously all day.

After suppressing this anger for about two weeks, only today, right now, am I admitting it. And admitting the exhaustion. And admitting the ouch hot prickly sting pain of it in my chest.

There's no urge to scream or flail or break something.

Just spiritual pain

and also relief, in this moment, that I can finally see what it is.

Is it more than coincidence that I received the insight while playing my guitar and singing...for the first time in two weeks? The music felt like massage to my soul, releasing tension and warming cold places in me.

The words--"I am angry"--are never true. Anger is an emotion. I feel emotions but I am more than emotions. Anger is not my nature. Not my essence.

I was afraid to look at the thing in the underbrush today because I was afraid that I might see my own face. I thought that I "was" angry. It was a question of identity. No wonder I couldn't/didn't want to/was afraid to let it go.

How ironic: one of my assignments with SpotLife this week is an exercise done standing before a mirror and speaking the words "Look at me...."