I've Been Angry For An Entire Year

I always thought I shouldn't allow anger to be a motivator in my life and yet, I've let it decide the music I've been listening to the most over the past few months. My punk playlist on Spotify, featuring bands like Dead Kennedys, Sex Pistols and other bands you could quite easily brand with the term anti-establishment. Punk rock has helped me to endure this past year but most importantly, it has opened my eyes to the views I've been suppressing for a long time. Now I have an uncontrollable urge to speak up and I feel best able to do this through writing.

Under the surface, and particularly over the last year, anger has been brewing within me and I've tried to ignore it. Most other people seem to think that we should do what we are told without question because it's 'in our best interests', or because we fear that we will get caught by those in charge or shamed by others for not following. Or maybe that's just what I felt? Here in the UK I've found some of the rules around the pandemic to be completely nonsensical and it's made me question why we blindly bow down to, and accept authority. Whenever I have questioned this before, I've seen the other side of things too and I've shut down my own opinion to the point where I didn't know where I stood. The truth is that I've mostly been distrustful my own opinions, as they are subjective and biased, and I chose to stay apathetic rather than consider what I might actually think and go against what other people might think. But what would happen if I actually opened myself up to what I'd been trying to supress? What if I let my shadow come out to play? If I didn't acknowledge this part of myself, I knew I'd just get angrier and that would be detrimental to my health. It had to be done. And without fully understanding this at the time, I began a new journey into the unknown.

Once I started to look at this side of myself, it revealed something quite intriguing. I started reading comments on social media posts and news articles and I stopped being annoyed by them. By allowing myself to have opinions, I was allowing others to have them too, and my judgement of others started to heal. I had probably been annoyed, not with the commenters, but part of myself for many years. Recently, I've been exploring being more assertive and it's been more okay than ever for people to question or criticise me. I'm less reactive and less afraid.

But why was I angry and questioning authority?

When the pandemic hit, I found it hard to cope. When people first started to speculate on the matter, I feared not for myself but for my family. I was afraid that they would get sick and die. I think many of us had this worry. Yet, this initial reaction was soon replaced with another threat:

How quickly others could take control over my own life.

Just before the first lockdown hit in the UK, I spent a lot of my time in the woods. It had been my happy place for a long time. I'd be okay as long as I had the woods, I thought. I was safe here, alone amongst the trees and the birds. I felt a level of freedom here I struggled to feel anywhere else. I always left feeling rejuvenated. I mean, I was driven to the pine trees which have been scientifically proven to have anxiety reducing and immune boosting properties. Instead, I spent months on end mostly indoors. 'You must STAY AT HOME' was branded everywhere. That moment when Boris announced this I felt like I was witnessing a significant moment in history. It seemed like something out of a movie. In the days to come I realised what impact this would have not only on my life but on everyone else's in the UK. I no longer had the woods as it was too far to drive and they insisted on us taking a walk from our own homes and for no more than an hour. Rather than going a little further afield where there were less people around, many people lived on streets where it was impossible to be 2 metres apart from others.

I was afraid of being stopped by the police and getting a fine if I went to the woods, so I didn't. I was afraid people I knew would brand me as selfish if they knew that I had chosen to do that. Yet, I failed to make sense of it. It didn't make sense to me that I couldn't be in nature alone. Whenever I am in the woods I avoid people anyway. I've never been within 5 metres of another person. It didn't make sense to me either that I was no longer allowed to go for a drive. These two things have been my coping mechanisms for a long time, even way before I got diagnosed with ADHD three years ago. A nice drive, playing some good songs and letting myself think about whatever needed to be thought about and then the 2-3 hours in the woods, getting out of my head and into my body, enjoying the present moment. Then of course driving home, feeling so much better. It was something I never wanted to give up.

I looked online for answers as to why this rule existed, and all I found was that there was a risk of breaking down or having an accident which might involve contact with another person. Both rare for anyone on any given day and at least for me, I'd have my partner be able to pick me up, unless of course I'd have to go into hospital if I'd have an accident, but that was unlikely to happen. The only thing reason that made any logical sense was that these restrictions were in place to make policing easier.

I live in between two towns. One is five minutes away and the other ten minutes away. I wanted to go to the town further away to get myself some gluten free foods, as this shop had a better choice. I was anxious that I would get stopped by the police for not going to the closest shop! I look back and wonder why I felt so powerless.

I questioned whether I was allowing my freedoms to be taken away too easily.

After all, some of them didn't make sense. 'But people are literally dying' I'd hear others say. But all I could think was that I wasn't going to catch COVID in the fucking woods. I went to work and every day new changes in place that I just couldn't keep up with. PPE that wasn't fit for purpose and gave us headaches and eye strain. And yet I felt powerless. And angry. I needed to think of others. Not myself. So I supressed my anger and out came anxiety, meltdowns and a heaviness that I couldn't lift. Internally I became more aggressive, opting to spend as much time alone as I could, listening to punk music every day and resenting everyone. It should never have gotten to this state. But it had and I tried to force myself to accept that. Releasing how I really feel, screaming and shouting and being loud about it is something that makes me incredibly uncomfortable. I've done the opposite for most of my life. I've always felt rebellious in some ways but not just for the sake of it. I've had a quiet rebellious nature to do what I want when I feel like it. There are of course some negative consequences of this and ADHD medication has definitely helped me to build up my brakes. I've mostly rebelled in subtle ways with my choice of music, quitting my A Levels half way through and throwing rubbish on the floor of my car because others shame people for doing it (lol), but speaking my mind has been reserved mostly for, well, my mind.

I've always been on the fence for who to vote for in elections. Through my eyes, all parties have major flaws and the way they 'debate' is just throwing out tantrums to each other about why each other are wrong, rather than addressing the real issues and creating change. If we acted like the politicians do as a child, our parents would have something to say about it. Yet, as a society, politics divides us more than it is beneficial. I see that clearly now.

I never chose to be born but here I am.

I refuse to take responsibility for my existence. My life has been a struggle and I know there's so many people who have it worse in every way imaginable. Going through all the years I did with undiagnosed ADHD and chronic illness, really took it's toll on me. Don't get me wrong, I am glad that I was born. Yet because I never chose to live with my conditions, nor did I chose where I lived, what financial situation my family was in growing up etc, I also never chose to be born into a world where someone else has more choice over my freedom than me. I have little autonomy in the way I want to live my life and this past year has made me realise how quickly what I did have can be taken away and that not only made me angry but really scares me.

If the government can do that, what else can they do? They ALL make promises they cannot keep. They can chose to go to war without the public support and indirectly kill thousands of people and face no consequences but they can chose to imprison people for non-violent crimes in where they will meet others like them who they can share their knowledge with. Around 80% will reoffend and the tax payers are funding this. I've been thinking so much about the problems I see with the establishment and the issues expands into multiple directions. What I thought was a viewpoint of people just not wanting to do what they are told, is a viewpoint of the free thinker the individualist, the anarchist and the one who questions the ones who are put in charge. I was wrong on many things.

With these views comes a lot of questions and a lot to think about but before that comes a huge acceptance of myself for having the courage to look behind the anger and reveal it's origins.

Now I can be honest with myself and know that although there are many things that I hate about the establishment, I will always have the present moment and my mind, for as long as I live, and they cannot touch it.