I want to talk about rage.

Not the kind of rage that hits you during a bad commute home, when someone cuts you off and you have to slam on your brakes and almost stop breathing. When you can’t lean on the horn hard enough or spew enough horrendous insults. This one is bigger.

I have trouble being angry. That’s not a huge surprise to anyone who actually knows me or has heard me talk about it. I don’t get angry easily. I don’t get angry often. And when it happens the way it has happened recently, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s no secret that I struggle with depression and anxiety—I’m as open as I can be about it, mostly because I want other people to feel safe talking about things they need to—and all I keep thinking about is that decently well-known phrase: “Depression is rage turned inward.”

When I get angry, I turn it into sadness. I think I’m probably too good at being sad, since I’ve certainly spent a lot of time doing it. I think maybe sadness feels a little more natural to me. I can feel awful with a good reason, not just one that has nowhere to go. But let me explain something I’ve been trying to practice for the last two-ish years—the 180s. I’ve been trying to reframe my thoughts and behaviors more intensely since the beginning of the year, because I came to a stark, scary realization: I don’t think I’m going to make it if I keep thinking the way that I do. So, when something anxiety-inducing pops up in my brain or when I’m on the verge of tears about something I can’t control, I try a 180: I think about what my instinctual reaction/thought would be, and I do the complete opposite. It was working out really well. There were some blips and bumps, but for the most part, every 180 I made was a clear move that put me into a different headspace where peace was the most important thing. Nothing is worth more than peace, to me. I know that. I’ve known that. But I feel like I’ve gotten so angry that peace isn’t a concept I can even fathom.

It started a few weeks ago, when I was on my way to visit a friend who had sent me really unhinged, really inappropriate text messages the night before. I’m someone that needs to do serious talks in person. Texting is impersonal, and it’s too easy to misinterpret tone. Phone calls just make me anxious. I’d rather look at you and realize that this is something happening between two human beings with faults and emotions. I always want to hear about how someone else thinks. So, I arrived at the house and walked inside, like I usually did when I came to visit, and checked two levels before locating my friend, asleep in the basement. I saw him, and I wanted to turn around and leave. The next thing I knew, I had woken him—abruptly—and was as close to screaming at someone as I think I’ve ever gotten.

This is the level of angry that I’ve only reached a couple of times in my entire life. It is white-out mad, when it’s nothing but fire and smoke in my head, and words loosed like a band of arrows from the back of my throat. A lot of archers showed up that afternoon. Arrows flew with abandon. I don’t know where a lot of them landed.

I am certainly not saying this wasn’t absolutely deserved. It was. This was some high-level disrespect that had been happening for months, and when I couldn’t 180 it, not really the way I wanted, I 180’ed into complete rage. I don’t even remember everything I said, but things just kept coming, even after I wasn’t as crazy angry, and I felt like I couldn’t stop. And of course, after I had calmed down and returned to my normal human form, I felt sad. I was so sad to have spoken to someone like that, even if they deserved it, so sad that who I am and what I wanted from this was not at the forefront of my action. I was still upset with my friend, but all I wanted was to hug him. Which I did, later. And I did get a chance to talk out some things in a more composed manner.

While things seemed like they were going to calm down a little, they absolutely did not in the coming days. The situation most definitely took a 180 itself, and went from tough, but manageable, to impossible and impassable.

And now, I feel like somebody else.

My mood had been so great for about three months. I had focused so hard on changing how I think about things, and I was so excited and proud of myself for feeling like I actually was living a different life than the one I felt sentenced to. My therapists had even commented on it. But it felt like all of that work had been balled up tightly, into a tiny thing that couldn’t get away from me fast enough.

For me, being in my 40s has brought back a lot of things. I remember who I was as a teenage Jacks, the passion and enthusiasm I would steer toward creativity, the strong, strong sense of who I was. It felt really good to grab her hand and pull her out of whatever crevice she’d been tucked into for too long. But I also got to remember what it felt like for her when she couldn’t get things out, when she was shoved into that crevice, and her thoughts became snakes in the dark, wrapping and wrapping themselves around her, sizing up their next meal.

I don’t know where my strength has gone. The confidence I had in changing thought patterns, the progress I was so happy to be making—I don’t know where it is. All it is now is rage, and it feels like there’s no outlet big enough for any of it. What do you do when you know what will make you feel better, but you’re not afforded the opportunity? When it took you so long to finally name it, finally embrace the things you know that help you, only to find them completely obsolete against a wall of silence and shadow?

My thoughts have not been my friends. They have been snakes. And it’s an infestation. They make me think about things I don’t like, things I won’t do, things that feel like they came from somewhere else. Even when I’m engaged at work, or caught up in an episode of a show that I like, or hanging out with Maddox and Mambo. I hear them, hissing from where they’re watching everything. It’s more than Scumbag Brain, which I’ve talked about and written about before.

I have been so desperate to feel better over the last three weeks. I feel like a pauper at a coronation parade, hands scraping at the road for some kind of scrap of merriment and prosperity. Oh, and it was my birthday last week.

Instead of buying myself something a little shiny or a little more expensive, I bought myself my first-ever tarot card reading. I’ve been thinking about it since it ended, and how it feels pathetic to be so despondent that you actually try to pay for happy thoughts or ideas. I sat with the reader, and—just like in my kitchen during a solo dance party, just like in my bed when I tried to quiet things down with a nap, just like when I was in the middle of feeding the boys—I started to cry. My throat tightened, and I literally could not use my full voice to apologize for things not turning out the way I thought they would. She had a lot to say about the things I don’t, and the way it makes things worse for me, and how it buries me underneath so much heaviness.

She asked me if I ever blogged.

It’s funny how things come full circle sometimes. How I used to use written words to say the things my voice couldn’t. How I’ve stepped away from it, even when I know it will work. We talked a lot about opportunities. She reinforced how my words have always been a life ring tossed into storm-grappled water, not just for me, but for people around me. I feel like I’m crawling back on to the shore, in tatters and depletion. And I’m wondering if anyone is listening.