Until recently, I don't think I ever put much thought into the word ‘anger' or how I felt about it.   I just knew it was an emotion that people feel from time to time, and being that I come from a family with short fuses, I was bound to feel that way once in a while.  

The first time I actually realized how big of a role anger played in my life was several months ago.   My husband had just been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer, one with a very small survival rate.   At the same time, we were informed that any treatment he was given would totally wreck any chances of us starting a family naturally, and we would have to go through all of the fertility treatments known to man in order to make children possible.   We had been trying to get pregnant for 6 months already before we knew anything was wrong.  

I'd spend the previous week watching my husband struggle to sit up in his hospital bed, running down the hall to get ice chips and juice when it was allowed, and my evenings were spent sitting in the pitch black of the hospital room after he had fallen asleep, crying silently and begging God to let this be the worst of it, to find out that nothing was wrong, there was no cancer, and to make my late menstrual cycle be caused by more than stress.   This I prayed repeatedly, until I would finally cry myself to sleep.  

Of course, this did not happen, and we started the next chapter in our lives.   The particular night I am referring to is when after several cocktails to drown our sorrows, my husband and I were sitting in bed, the cat curled up between us, talking about the situation.   It was then and there that I realized just how angry I was.   I was angry with God, for giving my husband of less than 6 months cancer, for taking away any surprise involved with having a baby, for causing the man I loved more than anything this much pain…this was also the night that I refused to believe in God anymore, for if there were such a creature, surely he would have heard my prayers??

Anger played another role in my life recently.   My husband and I had decided to go see Henry Rollins in a small spoken word venue.   We were both huge fans, and had gone to see him in the small theater every year since we'd first been there.   We moved his chemotherapy treatments around so that he wouldn't be too sick to go, and had looked forward to it for days, even weeks!!

Shortly after arriving, I saw in the distance a man that my husband had been friends with for many years, but hadn't heard from since he was diagnosed.   We always saw him there, so it wasn't a surprise.   I stood quietly, waiting to see if we would be recognized by this familiar face. Needless to say, we weren't.   We ran into him several times over the course of the evening, and it happened that we were seated exactly two rows behind him…he had stared right at us several times without a slight look of recognition.  

When the show was over, the man turned, looked right at us, immediately put his head down and sulked out of the theater, clearly ignoring both of us.   This angered me.   I felt the burning feeling I had several months before, when I had declared that there was no more god to me.   I wanted to confront him, I wanted to know what kind of friend ignored someone in their time of need, or worse!   When they weren't in need of anything but a familiar handshake and light conversation.   I wanted to know what kind of coward would avert his eyes to avoid a potential unpleasant conversation.   What kind of friend was this?

We never spoke to him again after that night.   I saw him once, I was alone in the grocery store, and he looked at me for a split second before noticing how venomous my eyes were in his direction, and quickly retreating in the frozen foods department.   Maybe it was the fact that on the fateful evening I had heard Henry Rollins speak about anger, and how he had told his audience to by angry every once in a while, I'll never know.   I'll never stop being angry by this so-called man, and if I am ever in a situation where we are left alone…may ‘god' help him.