I know this isn't much of a surprise, even less a universal truth. I don't yet know if this post will contain any such revelations; I know where I want to get to, but I don't yet know how to get there. This is sludge-of-consciousness writing; it does flow, but not as quickly as your typical worst-nightmare faux-Faulkner contest-losing entry.

So be patient, please. All I'm going to do in the end is to ask a question; for me, searching is often more useful than finding.

What is surprising is that there are people who know me very well, within a narrow but openly emotional context (i.e., group therapy), who don't believe that I'm angry. They know that I say that I'm angry, they know that I have reason to be angry, but they've never seen it. They've never experienced it. It isn't real to them.

I can even take it out of a box and show it to them. I open this box, and inside is a valley a lot like Crater Lake, with the bluest water in the bottom, and steep gray slopes thick with pine and fir. Suspended above the lake is a writhing ball of hissing black snakes.

That valley is how I deal with my anger. I used to believe that this anger, this abstract, imposed-from-outside thing, controlled me. I believed that I could actually get rid of it. No more, though; I've learned that this anger is part of me, that it gets its power from me, that I must always be aware of it if I want to avoid letting it take control of me. I've learned not to feed it, or even to touch it, or let it touch me. That is my way of not giving it my power. That is what keeps the snakes suspended above the lake.

This is part of taking ownership of my issues. My anger is mine, and no one else can deal with it. I'm actually much happier this way than if I were to try some of the alternatives--like possibly subscribing to alt.christ.avoid.personal.integrity and giving responsibility for my problems to a moldy, 2000-year-old corpse so I can be saved from myself.

I understand what my therapist means when he says that mental health is when your symptoms don't bother you any more. I'll always have those symptoms; they are as much a part of me as my heart and my spleen. It is my responsibility to learn to live with these symptoms, to learn not to be crippled by them, to find a way of living that makes something better out of the shit that was handed to me.

"The Symptoms?" Wasn't that the hit cartoon series on Fox-TV?

That's how one of the problems comes in. I free-associate, a lot, spontaneously. This is a normal thing, I've learned; I took the Meyers-Briggs personality assessment last year, and I'm almost off the scale as an introvert and an intuitive. Among other things, introverted intuitives are people who see connections that other people don't see. Those connections often lead to my triggers.

Anger isn't necessarily a bad thing. It is corrosive and destructive. It is also extremely powerful, and can be used to accomplish amazing things if--IF, IF, IF--it is harnessed, controlled, directed. If one understands that it must be used sparingly, and judiciously. If one understands the consequences of handling such toxic materials. If one understands that using anger must always be a conscious decision, one that must be made carefully with a full awareness of the costs. And if one remembers to wash one's hands afterwards. Or to stand in the shower until one runs out of hot water, or even beyond.

This is the problem with triggers. A trigger is something that causes me to reach for my anger without thinking. It is the opportunity that this ball of snakes is waiting for, their chance to take control of me once again. Recognizing those triggers is a step towards mental health; it is the awareness that lets me recognize that I have been triggered, and that lets me ask how I want to respond to the trigger. My response doesn't have to be anger. But to react in any other way, I have to keep that awareness positioned between my triggers and my anger. It is a significant task, and one at which I do not always succeed.

I do not like myself when I feel angry. This is the first step towards the question I promised you at the beginning, and that part of the question is simply, what does it take for me to be happy? Not feeling angry is part of the equation.

Another part of the equation is that I like to write.

A couple of months ago I checked into alt.support.depression. I checked out a few days later; the place was, well.....

I stayed long enough to catch a question from an artist who feared going into therapy. He was afraid he would lose his creativity. The message he got from several of us, including me, was that he was very probably right.

I lost my muse for four years. This does not mean that I did not write, or that I did not write well, or that the things I wrote about were not personal and meaningful to me. It does mean that I did not do any creative writing during those years.

It is only now, in this company, that my muse is coming back to me. It is gratifying, in a way, to know that my muse still has the hots for me. But like all things, she comes with a cost. The cost is that she feeds on my anger. The cost is that she knows all of my triggers.

She's welcome to eat all the snakes she can eat. I don't care if she grows fat on snakes, as long as she still inspires me. What I can't escape is that even after she eats them, they are still my snakes. Whenever she whispers in my ear, I have to assume that my snakes are her inspiration. Whenever she shits on my shoulder, I have to give that back to the snakes.

This is my dilemma. I want to be happy, and I can achieve that only if I set my anger aside. I must also satisfy the muse, and she demands my anger. If I detach myself from my muse as I detach myself from my anger, my creative writing will be empty, uninspired, pointless. If I do not write, then I may be happy, but I will also be incomplete.

Implicit in any dilemma is the issue of balance.

My partner Carol painted that part of the question. The painting is of a couple, naked, chained together at the ankle. They stand on their hands on a balance beam. Beneath the beam is a pit of fire.

If we fall into the fire, what choice is there but for my muse and I to get back on the beam and stand once more on our hands?

I wanted a question to come out of this. This is a piece of it. It is not as direct as I like for such a question to be, but I'm not finished forming the question, either. If I fail to maintain balance, that is one thing, but it may also be due to the way I have chosen to maintain that balance, that balance between my desire for happiness and my drive to write about things that involve my anger. There are always other choices.

Sometimes searching is more useful than finding. Useful, yes, but also painful and frequently dangerous.

"Question assumptions."
"Question authority."
"Question reality."

--Bumper stickers for sale at my Unitarian Fellowship