The Upside Of Anger

It seems difficult to believe that there can actually be an upside to being mad, and being mad on a recurrent basis to boot. Anger has such a negative connotation. To me, the notion is ludicrous. I like being angry when it comes to the end of my marriage. It's been my crutch all of these months.

People think it's a waste of time, that it's not warranted and that it's completely unneccesary. Unproductive. Stupid. Unhealthy. All of the adjectives I use to describe J-Fed are the words people use to describe my favorite emotion. Little do they know, it's my anger that's gotten me through the last year.

One of my favorite movies is The Upside of Anger where Joan Allen plays a woman who believes her husband of a zillion years just up and walks out of their marriage one day. Instead of curling up in bed and becoming consumed by her devastation, she becomes a nasty, bitter woman who sits around all day drinking vodka, smoking cigarettes, watching CNN and being angry. She obsesses over her husband's departure and curses his name every step of the way. To say I can empathize is an understatement. If I could have a monument erected in her honor, I would.

What I wouldn't give to sit around all day watching tv, getting drunk and being generally pissed of at J-Fed. Sadly, I have a job, two small children and a mortgage to pay. I also detest straight liquor and I get nasty hangovers that leave me hurling for days. The other night I forced my new friend Mr. Ex to watch the movie. When I expressed my desires to be this woman, he quickly pointed out that it was far more romantic in the movies than in real life. I'm guessing there really isn't much fun in being constantly tanked and suffering from a wicked case of DTs.

Mr. Ex has listened patiently for the last three months as I rambled on about my marital misery. Ironically, Mr. Ex has recently suffered his own bout of this very same ailment. Yet there was a big difference between Mr. Ex and I. While I was eternally bitter and basically frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog over my divorce, he was taking it all in stride. Was he happy his marriage was over? Of course not. Was he going to let it drag him down like an albatross around his neck? The answer was an emphatic no. That's not to say he was unaffected but instead accepting.