There’s an angry woman in my house and she won’t leave.

In the seventh grade, I spent a whole school year sitting next to this boy. I had the biggest crush on him all the year before and for the first half of this year, I had let it go. I was determined to like literally anyone else because I saw him every day and he had grown to annoy me. Until the annoyance grew back into a crush, but by then a friend of my best friend had liked him. She concocted this whole dramatic scenario telling people I had threatened to fight her over him. In turn, she became my enemy and target. Through means of petty gossip snarky comments and psychological warfare, only 12-year-old girls could possibly think of I slowly tore her down. I wish I could say looking back I feel remorse or even regret. All I could think was she had started a war she wouldn’t win over a boy who liked neither of us.

The problem with being self-aware is it makes what you do even worse. I knew I was being petty and snide. I knew I was being a bitch and a bully. I had straight up told the boy this. I often need people to know the darkest parts of me and from there decide to stay despite them. I remember telling this 12yr old boy some version of “I’m a bitch and I’m mean and if you don’t like that go be with her and leave me alone you don’t have to be my friend.” He questioned as most people since then have at this spiel how I could say these things about myself. How i could categorize myself as my worst traits and wear them so bluntly? My first boyfriend hated how much I would bite. That I would attack and attack and attack never just walking away letting people think whatever they wanted. He couldn’t understand why I had to make people hate me. He hated that people couldn’t simply dislike me, I had to make them hate me. I had to confirm all their worst beliefs about me.

I know I’m more than just angry, bitter, cruel, snide, and hateful, but if someone wanted to believe the worst about me I’d show them just how bad it could get. The first time I recognized this about myself was when I heard the words come out of my mother’s mouth when I was 18. She was fighting with her husband, a common occurrence, and she was explaining to me that he had asked why she was always so angry. She scrolled through their chats furiously reading their conversations and turned to me and said “If he wants to say I’m bitter and I’m so angry then motherfucker I’ll show you angry.” The words stopped me in my tracks. Growing up I hated the way my mother communicated. She spews venom so naturally and will twist what you say to fit her narrative. There’s no winning in her court when she’s judge, jury, and executioner.

So when I began to look at the parallel tribulations she was having with her husband and me with my first boyfriend I realized I had to end this cycle. This is certainly not some help column telling you how therapy or God or yoga fixed my anger, but the staunch realization that I could either choose to be my mother or choose to be different. My relationship with my mother is difficult, the communication is nonexistent. So much so that this February shortly after my 21st birthday we will be two years of no contact. The final fight that led me to this decision, the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was about me not inconveniencing myself for her. I was only supposed to exist within the context that she allowed. Children are to be seen not heard. They are to obey and respect. For four years my high school teachers saw me go up and down on this emotional rollercoaster dealing with my mother. It made me numb angry and defensive.

I jumped into friend groups and clung to whoever viewed me as a shiny new toy. I became detached from knowledge and focused on being anything other than what she wanted me to be. She wanted me to be a lawyer so I would work on becoming a photographer. She wanted me to be an academic weapon so I would be bohemian and casual with my classes. I would sleep all day dreaming of any escape. I would throw myself into the idea of running away to some big city or some across-town life as a young bride and mother. I starve and diet and exercise and I would chop my hair and wear clothes she hated. She thought I was boring and bland and she told me always that she would never have been my friend in school. Yet, the more I molded myself to be less and less and less like her the more blind I became to just how much of her I would absorb.

I cut off friends easily. I was reckless and nonchalant about consequences. My senior year flew by and I had done nothing and everything. I had a way of getting out, but no plan to get there. My first gap year came fearfully, I hated being in that house. Hated being with her. When I worked my first job at the mall during my senior year my mother would bitterly leave me across town if she believed I had disrespected or gone against her wishes. I was 17 stuck miles away from home because I left a dish or two in the sink. Because I had been sarcastic or shown any bit of teenage angst. This trauma carries on and any time I argue with my friends or my father I expect them to abandon me and leave me to my own devices. I walk home alone after fights or seize up whenever my father still does something for me after I’ve angered him. I once had a panic attack because he overslept picking me up from work one night.

So it’s more than clear to me that I have a lot to work through, but every time I take steps forward the angry woman makes me feel small again. Whenever I feel slighted I can never just be upset I'm downright furious or sobbing. The former comes up more often. The slight mention of my name and I strain my neck ready with a vicious retort. When I first cut contact this angry woman retreated. She would come back to be a little bitchy or bratty here and there, but there wasn’t the intense anger and darkness that often loomed with her. I wasn’t healed she still lived inside me, but she wasn’t as strong as she had been for the last decade. Until I moved to Boston. Very quickly I was greeted with the same darkness and vitriol and bitterness that I had grown accustomed to. My roommate was the same brand of manipulative and narcissistic that my mother was. Turning everyone against each other, ensuring that she was viewed as the bridge between us, and waving a key to some fabled life that would come if you only followed her blindly.

In the span of four months Q.D., a secret name I oh so affectionately called her to my friends, had manipulated the entire house into hating me. She had put herself on a pedestal of wisdom lecturing me on how my beliefs and views on love, men, life, college, and my own goddamn future were wrong and I needed to live her way. While pretending to be close to me she confided in our other roommate that she believed I would steal her cats, who I merely tolerated, and a coach purse we had both wanted, it was a black pebbles leather bag and I had wanted the white or brown versions. I received the same lectures from Q.D. that I had from my own mother, that I didn’t clean enough or that I was always holed up in my room. I admit I am not the cleanest roommate, but when we had created a schedule I was regularly the only one to complete my assigned tasks. I also hid in my room because I knew no one and the people who had promised me an inside view of the city that I knew no one in and nothing about had stabbed me in the back and asked me to clean my blood off the floor. These miserable months of bitterly biting mytongue brought back the angry woman in full force.

I tried desperately to keep her away to lead with light and love to be a better person, but in January I snapped. I let her out and refused to put her back. All my biggest fears and worries came out and gone was the hopeful naive facade. I lashed out at Q.D. and removed myself from all household obligations and cordialness. Thus the Cold War was officially recognized in the house. The biggest problem with letting the angry woman take over again was letting all my emotions be high. The numbness that had frosted over sadness and joy and anxiety and hope had released them all so quickly and so fully. So when Q.D. eventually moved out I was still bitter and angry. My venom just turned to old favorite targets, my friends.

I fought with and ended a friendship with someone who I had never had so much as an argument with. I snapped at my other roommate over the tiniest of things. I rolled my eyes and shit-talked my closest cousin. I thought the worst things of the people I loved the most. Every little jab suddenly went straight to my heart. Every misstep became the end of the world. Someone couldn’t just be having a bad day or dealing with life. They hated me and were plotting my demise. I was paranoid and anxious. At the smallest sip of alcohol, I was asking everyone around me if they hated me and spending the rest of the night sobbing if there was even the slightest hesitation before they replied. I asked the same guy friend every day if he hated me. He had to constantly remind me that he would tell me if I was doing too much. My friends were constantly talking me down from ledges unknowingly.

Once the anger subsides, once my mother’s words and actions and patterns don’t rule me the sad, scared little girl who had to grow up hearing and seeing it all is left. I would try to keep the party going far too long so I wouldn’t be left alone. I would rush home after work to get a glimpse of my roommate before she went to sleep. I nonstop text the same people to see if they still care. My entire childhood was being in rooms full of people and feeling unseen or unheard. My mother’s family forgetting my name and calling me by my sisters. I am very anxiously attached and constantly testing the people around me unfairly waiting for them to misstep so I can be validated by my own self-destructive notion that everyone hates me and that no one cares about me.

The biggest problem with being self-aware is knowing that this is all wrong and fighting against my own self constantly. For every time I ask “Do you guys hate me,” I know that if my friends did they wouldn’t invite me out. They wouldn’t ask me to hang out or text me back, they wouldn’t go out of their way to take their breaks with me or make plans to help install my AC. For every time I walked in the door of my apartment to all the lights shut off, I knew my roommate waited for me until she absolutely had to go to sleep for work. She often told me so. We would hold each other tightly and relish in our crossing paths how few they were this summer. Most recently it’s been reminding myself that everyone’s life doesn’t revolve around me, that my aunt is in the middle of planning a wedding and when she’s frustrated it’s not simply because I’m existing it’s because she’s 9 days away from one of the most monumental moments of her life. That my friends didn’t forget about me the semester just started and they work and go to school full time and now live in a completely different city. The world doesn’t stop for anyone, and I’m certainly no exception.

So that bitter, angry, cruel, petty, and snide part of me loses some power right here and right now. What a miserable life to live thinking all people have to do is care about your every move. We don’t live in a complete surveillance state where our closest family and friends monitor our every move and decide that if we wake up at 10:03 instead of 7:30 they hate us. I think I think too much about myself. It’s a terrible trait for someone who wants to lead a peaceful life. Unfortunately, it makes a great trait for a writer. I confess all this though, bearing my thoughts and vulnerability to say that I am deeply flawed. I beg God and the universe and every person in my life for forgiveness. For I have been shown so much love and kindness and light and I have mistaken it for a trap. I have hurt so many and thought so poorly of people whose biggest crimes were loving me. I hope that I have mended all the fences I have broken, but understand that more work is to be done. Apologizing and taking accountability is only one portion of making amends, working day by day to treat the people around me better is the true test of how deeply I mean what I say. So it’s my hope that every time I try to self-sabotage and don’t I get closer to being the person my friends and family deserve.

The angry woman still lives in my house, but the eviction notice is on the door. One day she won’t be there or maybe along with me, she’ll get better at communicating and working through the doubts and fears. All I can be sure of is the angry woman cannot and will not control me forever.