Why It Is Good To Be Angry

How a Netflix screenwriter got me to finish my novel...

P.C. Austin Chan

“The truth is that anger isn’t what gets in our way—it is our way.” Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her.

The Man In A Cap

People often ask me, “Tash, how did you finish writing your novel?” The short answer is that I got angry. The longer answer is the story which follows.

This time last year, I was on the precipice of a wild and wonderful summer romance. I had been sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco, casually chatting with the barista I used to know. I told her that I was a writer now, and how excited I felt about my new career. As I left the coffee shop, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Hey,” the man in a cap said to me, “I heard you were a writer. I’m a writer also.”

He had a thick chin under his salt-and-pepper beard, but his eyes were sparkling blue. He asked for my number after he told me he was working on a documentary.

“Can I take you out for a drink?”

I debated with myself in a naïve way for the rest of the day. I stalked him briefly on the internet. This man, David Lorness (not his real name), had his own IMDb page. He also had a smattering of Netflix shows and documentaries written, filmed, and produced. He was born in 1983, so he was 12 years older than me. With this new information, the prospect of going on a date with this older, successful stranger seemed far too enticing to turn down.

I won’t bore you with every detail of our story, but I will mention that David was cute and a little shorter. He wore linen shirts, and I noticed he had tattoos peeking out at his wrists and his neck. When I eventually asked him these, he told me that he’d been a rebellious 17-year-old; he’d asked a biker gang guy in his rural town in bumblefuck California to give him Hell’s Angels tattoos over his entire upper body. Still, what drew me to David was that he was so interesting. He had lived in Germany for years and spoke German. He had lived in Afghanistan for a while and had done work as a war reporter. And he had a sweet smile.

I told David I was going back to Mexico City. Within a week he showed up in my neighborhood and took me out to dinner. As we spent more time together, I realized I also liked David because he was who I wanted to become: a big wig, Netflix, and Hollywood screenwriter. He had the dashing career, the dashing blue eyes, and the dashing personality to match. Getting to know him, in a weird way, was transformative for me. When I was around him, I felt like we were on a pedestal together. He fielded calls from his assistant and his producers while we were having brunch. The life that I was on the brink of experiencing with him was exciting, star-studded, and bright. I remember that much.

With David, I saw my entire future and worth and life expanding before me. I too could be an LA big wig Netflix writer. I too could do well. He was opening my eyes to who I was, to my trajectory and to who I could be. David helped me see myself from the outside. The power couple. As Tracy Chapman says, “I had a feeling I could be someone”. I wasn’t just this small person doing small things. I was a big, full, interesting person with the career I wanted to match.

David was someone I thought I could learn a lot from. But the personal and professional boundaries in our relationship were blurred and in bed together from the beginning. That first night he was in town, we took a walk after dinner. When we got to the little fountain roundabout by his Airbnb, David seemed to linger. I can’t remember if he invited me up to his room. At that moment, I was too busy wondering if he had flown all the way to Mexico City just to sleep with me. Maybe he wanted a whirlwind romance. Maybe he wanted to make love to me in his nice but slightly crookedly built Airbnb.

I think I made fun of him and laughed it off, and I walked myself home. Something in my body just knew, I guess. I didn’t feel safe enough. I might have just been friend-zoning him out of the protection of my own heart. But I didn’t want to let him into my underwear. Not yet anyway. For whatever reason, I felt like I needed to test him. That’s what I do with questionable men who have questionable intentions. David was so interesting, so inspiring, so cool. I didn’t want to be his side piece for a week. I wanted him to be my partner. So, I tested him to say: are you here for your own quick bodily satisfaction, or are you here for me?

A couple days later, David came down with a mysterious illness. He needed to fly back to Los Angeles for treatment immediately. He had told me many times about how much he hated LA, and that when he was there, all these bad luck things would happen to him, like getting into car accidents. I had believed that he was escaping the dark and dangerous vortex of LA by coming to Mexico. Yet only a couple days in Mexico City had passed before it suspiciously pulled him back in. He got on a plane to LA the next day after I had brought some medicines and a smoothie to his house, praying he would magically mend and feel better. Once he got on that plane, I never heard from him again.

Of course, he broke my heart. A couple of weeks later, I wrote two letters to David which I never sent to him and which I can’t find now. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but the first was delving into how angry I was at him, and the second was my love letter about how I wanted him to be the father of my children. So, that’s where we got to with that.

This man exited my life just as fast as he had entered it. I cried more than a couple of times. But what hurt the most was that I had to figure out what to do with myself. I had seen my own potential in this random man. Maybe his validation of me was what I had needed. There was no doubt in my mind that something within him had triggered something within me. The person, the potential, the vision, the talent, the success. I don’t know exactly what. Even at 28 years old, staring into the 40+ year old man’s eyes, I felt he had seen something in me. Even if it was only for a second, for a minute, for a week. Even if I was too young for him. Even if my feelings scared him away. Even if I will never know why he exited in the way he did. I hate to say that before a 40-year-old successful writing white, tattooed man saw me, I didn’t see myself. But there’s something in that. Maybe it’s true.

When David ghosted me, he ripped everything out from underneath my feet. I was suddenly left with nothing, and I fell. I fell hard. I realized that no one in this world was coming to save me or build the career I wanted, except me. No boyfriend. No husband. No fancy little bungalow in Venice Beach. I was the only one who could build the life that I wanted for myself. And so, I sat down in my rage, and I finished up the edits of my novel. I published my book. I became an author. And I became the person I had aspired to be for almost 15 years.

The Gifts of Anger

Anger is a natural emotion that every human experiences. But for us girls, at a young age, it is almost beaten out of us. As women, when we express our anger we are seen as less capable, “crazy, irrational and unhinged” (Neff). Yet when we’re prevented from speaking up and defending ourselves, we’re more likely to self-criticize, and develop anxiety and depression because of it. When we suppress our anger, we ignore that we might be under threat or that someone might have treated us unfairly.  

For much of my life, when I felt angry, I also felt an incredible amount of shame. This was because I knew I wasn’t supposed to be angry. But the anger I felt and chose to experience when David ghosted me turned out to be a gift.

The following list paraphrases the gifts of anger, that Dr. Kristin Neff details in her book, Fierce Self-Compassion:

1. Anger energizes us. It mobilizes us to act and overrides inertia or complacency. It gives us the blast of motivation needed to stop injury or injustice. We need to get angry to create change.

2. Anger provides incredible focus on what threatens us. It acts like a laser beam pinpointing to present danger. It provides us with incredible clarity at the exact moment it’s needed.

3. Anger helps us to defend and protect ourselves. It overrides the fear response and enables us to fight back against someone who is hurting us or being unfair.  Sometimes we need to be angry to have the courage to confront those threatening or disrespecting us.

4. Anger has a clear communication function. It alerts us to the fact that something is wrong, and at the same time it lets others know we’re unhappy about it.

5. Anger provides a sense of personal control and empowerment. When we’re angry and engaged in changing things for the better, we’re no longer the helpless victim. We take on the spirit of a survivor. Anger reminds us that we have a powerful voice in how we choose to live our lives.

Of course, these gifts only relate to constructive anger, the helpful kind, as opposed to destructive anger, which is when someone rejects and blames other people in a personal way.

Conclusion

At the end of the long road of writing my novel, I was stuck in a lull, in a shallow valley with no momentum. The email from my editor sat unanswered in my inbox. The draft of my novel that only needed a few more changes was lying around collecting dust. But when David ghosted me, my anger at him catalyzed me through the trough of disappointment and launched me directly into action.

If you can stomach it, I recommend having your heart broken about 2-3 times per year. Because when my corner of the world with David crumbled, I had to rebuild myself from the ashes. During heartbreak, whenever I cross the chasm from sadness, rejection, and pain into anger, that’s when I know I’ll be more than okay. I bounce back better, even.

I’ll never forget the last message I sent to him. It was this absolutely fascinating article in the Guardian about a Russian film set project that people lived on for years and years. David never responded to it. Yet today, when I stare at the burning hole at the bottom of our WhatsApp messages, I smile and wonder where my rage at him will take me next.

So, make sure you have plenty of conflict in your personal life and that you get angry in a constructive way often. In my experience, I’ve learned that it can provide you with the incredible fuel you’ll need to finish almost any creative endeavor.