“Okay.”
I thought for a minute. I was angry with pretty much everything on the planet, so I visualised the Earth as a red balloon — covered in sunsets, it was beautiful — and watched it float away. I was left with the few things that didn’t make me angry, so it was basically just me and all the cats, sitting in space and looking a bit bewildered, as the Earth flew off. I wondered if we could make a new home on Pluto if I put some nice carpets down and grew some apples.
“No no no!” said the therapist. “You’re doing it wrong. Not the thing that makes you angry. The anger itself — your emotion. That’s the balloon that you watch float away.”
Again I had a think. I was pretty much made of anger except for a loose skin of pain. In my mind I turned myself into a red balloon and floated away, seeing my pain-skin slump to the ground. All my angriness drifted off into the atmosphere, where it got angry about the pollution, the low oxygen. It was enjoying itself, doing its thing.
“That’s not what I meant,” said the therapist. “You are not just your anger. This exercise is about getting free of your anger. Letting your anger go. I can’t help feeling that you’re sabotaging the exercise on purpose.”
I saw his taut mouth, the lines furrowing his forehead, his flushed skin.
I told him what to do with his anger.
After being homeless in her teens, Cathy Bryant worked as a life model, shoe shop assistant, civil servant and childminder before writing professionally. She’s had hundreds of pieces printed all over the world, and won 34 literary awards. One of her poems was used in a literacy project and a textbook for learners of English. Cathy’s poetry collections are Contains Strong Language and Scenes of a Sexual Nature, Look at All the Women, and Erratics. She spent many years on Cathy’s Comps and Calls, a website of free opportunities for skint writers, until becoming too ill to continue.
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