Don't Close Your Eyes
Welcome to Biddy Sounds Off, a place for episodic writing and music I love. I'm Biddy. I've noticed at this advanced stage in my life, it has become easier for me to access my anger. The more experience with this, the more control I gain in managing and releasing it. I embrace it when it flares up, you know, Because I have established that I'm in a safe and private environment.
Biddy:I remind myself not to turn away because the anger is pure. White hot or blood red, sometimes a blue flame denied for so long. The anger is, of course, a completely normal feeling. The abnormal thing would be to turn away, to ignore the anger, repress it, fear it, mask it. All of the many things I've tried before, unsuccessfully, of course.
Biddy:The anger is a purely normal reaction to the affront of trauma. It should not have happened. And people getting hurt and animals getting hurt and a disregard for humanity and a contempt for occupying status outside of the so called norm and the crushing weight of racism and misogyny and transphobia and systems that perpetuate poverty and suffering, the only human response is anger. If I pay close attention to the way it burns through my blood in my body, I start to notice the twinges of pain like stitches tearing open by the welling up this blooming sadness. Anger and pain are so closely linked that they are symbiotic, codependent, maybe.
Biddy:For me, the anger contains its own stored momentum. Kinetic energy and so pairing that with the physicality, a physical response, usually I'm able to release some pain in my body. The pain lives in the body. Right? It can be stretching, crying, screaming is fun.
Biddy:Releasing anger has fueled a lot of my recovery behaviors. More walks through the beautiful city of San Miguel de Allende and old city Guanajuato, stomping, headphones in, a whole new world shows itself to me. A marvel through simple observation, a tapestry of gothic steepled churches and baroque or colonial architecture. The anger subsides and my body relaxes. Mind, body, spirit, free and clear.
Biddy:Let's get our bodies involved with these next two songs. First, you heard deer hoof with plastic thrills followed by the ets with dead and gone. Back Back to the narrative. Anger can cleanse, but I don't want it to attach. And so I hope you took the opportunity to dance it out with me.
Biddy:Anger comes in with electric energy. I like the activity. It can impel us along the continuum when paired with useful behaviors, the kind with follow through. It can bring improvement, some contribution, a positive if possible, a neutral if not. But if I allow the anger to find rest and comfort within me, it will stay and become toxic.
Biddy:I have to be strict in this and check-in with myself. Check myself preferably before I thoroughly and completely wreck myself. Right? It's good advice and it's a banger of a reminder from 1994 because they want f x. But were true words ever spoken?
Biddy:Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Okay? A statement of proactivity versus reactivity. The language of mindfulness and emotional self regulation. Each syllable becomes a beat in a mantra, and this is how your old ass teacher brings hip hop into the classroom.
Biddy:I am that nerdy teacher full out because I believe it. All that classroom community stuff. I have seen the most troubled of students come into our shared classroom community and visibly relax, share out, volunteer when they only wanted to fight before, or shut down and be invisible like I hoped I was. But when missus Muse That was her literal name. Can you believe it?
Biddy:But when missus Muse walked into our classroom on the 1st day of 5th grade and made her way up and down the row of desks saying, welcome. Some of you are new to me and others, she paused at my desk, and I glanced up like a fearful prey animal. Others, I already know. The warmest smile radiated off of her face and my eyes must have twinkled. I'm sure I blushed.
Biddy:I loved her desperately. She had also been my 2nd grade teacher and I realized in that moment, she remembered me. And another time too, it must have been 3rd or 4th grade and it was way past the late bell. The school had emptied and the teachers were the only ones left. I've been trying to pee but couldn't.
Biddy:And now that the building was quieter, I was reaching another sort of desperation level. Missus Muse found me and called out, I'm fine, I said, and immediately got out of there. Ran home, pee shyness. I don't know if I fully outgrew that one, actually. Now, of course, I live alone, it's not an issue.
Biddy:But I struggled with it at home. If someone were in a room nearby, at restaurants and bars, if I didn't have the bathroom to myself. Theaters when someone is waiting near the stall and the line is long from intermission. I learn to cope by focusing all of my attention on the palm of my hand. I would lick the inside of my palm and then blow on it.
Biddy:And for some reason, it would focus on those sensory patterns and usually, I could pee at least a little. The best bathrooms were the ones in Europe that went all the way down to the floor with their doors. Why don't they do that everywhere? But I don't wanna make it sound like teaching is all about writing wholesome song parodies. These are great fluency builders, by the way.
Biddy:We work communally to organize parts and sometimes dance steps. And sometimes we even performed these pieces in front of other grade levels or once we did a whole school production. We didn't actually do Doss FX, but we did do other more relevant pop songs. And then we got new admin who wouldn't allow us to veer from the district planned curriculum. Those were also the years that our classroom culture didn't gel that great.
Biddy:One of those years, a 3rd grader kicked my shin black and blue and I got a goose egg on it. I'd only ever heard of people getting goose eggs on their heads. I wasn't angry at the child. The kid was suffering. We all were.
Biddy:I called out for another teacher and they came to help, but this was during class time. And when I looked back at my students, they were terrified. Some were crying, 3rd graders. No one came to check on me. The anger rose in me like a heat and then liquefied into tears.
Biddy:I hit them and brought the class back together as best I could realizing that they've just been traumatized by that reenactment of a domestic violence scene many of them already knew well enough by heart. Let's get our hearts pumping now. Started off with Screaming Females and I'll Make You Sorry. I once saw that band playing face melting metal at Larimer Lounge in Denver. The phenomenal Marissa Paternoster giving us those lyrics, so many of us lie but don't know the words.
Biddy:Followed by a hay castrator by the one and only Amy Ray, believe it or not, from her 2001 album, Stag. I just love the simmering rage in that song plus the goddamn drums in that fucking song. But now back to the narrative. One of the most important things I've learned from children and from animals is that I cannot meet anger with anger. This is fire with fire.
Biddy:It's what I'm used to. My family dynamic taught me that the loudest bully gets the most respect. Suck it up. Act tough. Be the alpha.
Biddy:Might makes right. None of that ever worked for me. Responding out of anger, fear, children, animals, humans deserve better than that, don't we? When I learned how to regulate my emotions in the classroom, I realized this was different than the suppression of my feelings, my thoughts, all of it. I bought in and began internalizing these beliefs.
Biddy:We all deserve respect. We all deserve to try our best without hurting ourselves or one another. Human suffering is not unique, but our responses can be. By managing and releasing the anger, the pain, the suffering, without self judgment, our individual responses can teach us about the way we regard our shared humanity. And I'm glad I share humanity with you, gentle listener.
Biddy:Our last song tonight will be Coffee and TV by Blur. This has been Biddy Sounds Off. Thank you for listening.
