Running with Rage and my rage

A PG-13 story about a much-needed release of pent-up emotions.

I am fucking pissed that my mother died.

I am fucking pissed that my sister-in-law Jess died.

I am fucking pissed that cancer is a thing. A senseless disease that takes so many good lives with no mercy or reason at all. I am fucking pissed that it cut my immediate family in half last year.

I am fucking pissed.

The rage rolls around inside me like scalding water ready to burst into a boil. It wants to explode and splash and overflow and cascade out of me. A steaming boiling mess of rage.

But I don’t let it boil over. I keep it clenched in. It hovers on the cusp of a violent eruption.

I don’t want to let it out because I am afraid of all this rage. There’s so much of it. Two years of anger has mounted and festered and grown like a snowball rolling down a mountain. From a tiny little ball to a furious avalanche of anger.

So it stays trapped inside me. Where it rolls around from wall to wall to wall of my body. Wrenching muscles into knots. Burning in my head. Punching me awake at night.

“Can you say ‘I’m fucking pissed that my mother died,’?”my therapist asks. She wants me to release some of this anger. To twist the valve that will let some of it slip out. To free my body and mind of it. To feel it instead of suppressing it. To stop it from escaping and landing on the wrong target – again. At Ian when he forgets to buy broccoli on pizza night. At the driver going 7mph too slow on 28th Street. At myself when I trip and kick my shin into the kitchen stool.

“You are such an idiot!” I cry. But I am mad at the wrong person. I am mad when I see an older woman walking down the street. “Why didn’t my mom get to grow old?” I scowl. I am irritated when I see someone post a happy photo with their mom. A happy photo of a young couple who’s not Jess and Jameson. I throw my phone into the bed, unable to look at it for another second. The red-hot rage is bucking inside me. 

I want someone to be angry at. But there is no one to blame for all of this loss. There is no High Minister of Cancer for me to track down and pummel with rotten dog poop and assault with a stream of curse-laced insults. I want to hammer nails through their tires, stuff rattlesnakes in their shoes, season their dinner with rat poison.  

I stare at my therapist on the screen. I see myself in the corner of our video session, curled into my big grey hoodie in my big red armchair. I look like a reclusive hermit crab, cuddled up with my simmering rage.

I am fucking pissed that my mother died.

But I can’t say it out loud. I can’t yell it and mean it. The emotions that fuel it are too big and too scary for me as I’m tucked into my safe little shell.

So it simmers inside me. Cranking my muscles into knots. Haunting me at 2am. 3am. 4am. I stay full of rage. I feel it even more now that I am aware of it stewing inside me. I think about how to release it.

I remember an old breakup. This ex-boyfriend asked me when I could grab the rest of my stuff from his house but then just left it out when he knew I had a meeting. He texted, “it’s outside the front door.” There was rain in the forecast. He piled a bag of dried ginger with ants crawling around inside of it on top of a framed photo from my last 100 miler. I grabbed my belongings and then drove away from his house blasting The Chicks “Not Ready to Make Nice.”

“I’M NOT READY TO MAKE NICE! I’M NOT READY TO BACK DOWN!” I hollered. My voice at the upper limits of its volume. He wasn’t worth my anger so I yelled at the road instead. “I’M STILL MAD AS HELL!” Every note was in the Key of Loud. I felt better as I kept driving and scream singing. Leaving an unstoppable trail of my rage as I drove away from his house for the last time.

I decide to start a new playlist on spotify and pull out my running shoes. I call it “Fuck This.” I lace up.

The sky is smoky grey and murky with clouds when I step outside. But I pull sunglasses over my eyes anyway.

I push play and Lily Allen’s perky voice trills out an enthusiastic “Fuck You! Fuck You! Fuck You! Fuck you very, very muuuuuch!”

The song is upbeat and vengeful. Each hateful curse punctuated by a happy high note. A melodic middle finger flying high.

I smile. It feels so good to hear those words. To mouth those words. To feel those words.

“Fuck you!” I smile to the empty street.

I start running.

Lily becomes Rage Against the Machine and they are screaming “Fuck You, I won’t do what you tell me! Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” over and over and over. My feet pound the cracked sidewalk as my periphery vision blurs and all I see is the patch of ground in front of me and all I hear are sweet, sweet profanities. The driving beat eggs me on as my feet punch the pavement.

My footfalls match the rhythm of the cursing and we are running together. Me and Rage and my rage.

Pound pound pound. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

I remember my mom texting me after she was diagnosed with cancer. She hated swear words. We weren’t allowed to say “sucks” growing up. That word still made her cringe well after we reached adulthood.

“Fuck cancer,” she texted. “That’s right. *Fuck* cancer.”

She said it felt good to swear at it. To hit cancer with her cruelest words. A rare curse from my mother’s mouth carried a lot of weight. It meant more than your average cuss.

I repeat her words to the cold pavement.

“Fuck cancer.”

I keep running and I’m breakin’ dishes with Rihanna, I’m breakin’ stuff with Limp Bizkit, Miley and I have two letters for cancer and they are “F. U.”

My feet slap the street as I throw more dirty words at the dark clouds. I have said and sang and shouted more swears on this 8 mile run than in the last 8 days combined. I am leaving a trail of my anger on the road with the help of Eminem, The Chicks, and Alanis.

I do not oppose colorful language like my mom did, but I feel like each and every expletive during this run has also carried a little extra weight. Weight that has traveled from inside me and spiraled away with my stream of profanities.

My limbs feel lighter than they did 8 miles ago as I see my house down the street and wind down. A deep inhale feels like it’s reaching a new untouched corner of my lungs. My heart beats a few beats slower.

I am still angry. One run could not cure two years of pent-up rage. But after 8 miles and a few hundred fucks, I feel much fucking better.

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And one last note for today: my first Runner’s World piece was published this morning(!). It’s all about my mom and how my memories of her and how this big running thing we shared have helped me through grief. It is the most bittersweet byline. It’s exciting to see my words and my mom’s story under the Runner’s World banner, it is also so hard to think about how excited my mom would have been to see it and read it and share it with every single one of her facebook friends at least 17 times before 3pm today.

I miss her and her fierce motherly love so very much. It’s impossibly hard to have exciting things happen without her. And it’s also so special to share some of her amazing story with Runner’s World runners.

And with you! You can read the story - and more of my mom’s story - on Runner’s World.