I don’t have a lot of anger. What I have is a lot of frustration which comes out in anger. I know what I want to do, become depressed or stressed and fail, then get frustrated, and ultimately, angry.

But I don’t have a lot of anger.

There are a lot of things to be angry about. The selfishness of anti-vaxxers. The death cult of Trumpers and other right wing nuts. Vladimir Putin.

That’s the global stuff.

There’s also the unfairness of the system in which we live, where little traps are set and education does not provide us the information we need to craft the lives we want until years later, already locked into debt and jobs and mortgages and various other circumstances we fall into, we find ourselves trapped.

Locked in place by a system that exists not to free us, but to chain us to the profit motive.

Other people’s profit.

It’s enough to piss you off. No one needs multimillion dollar yachts or so much money they can send themselves to space for a joyride. What we need is to live, without unnecessary fear for our health or well-being, with an ability to put food on the plate, have a place to stash our bodies for the night and a connection with the people and world around us.

Experience is worth more than things.

We are not taught this. We are taught to buy things instead, as though a bigger TV or a fancy watch or a nice dress will make us better people. Happier people.

It’s hard not to be angry. And I am. At injustice. At hypocrisy. At the selfish blindness of it all.

But more than that, on a daily basis, I am frustrated. And though I could channel that into righteous anger, it more often than not manifests as frustrated anger. Stressed out anger. The kind of anger that is purely destructive and cathartic only for a moment before the shame creeps in and the consequences come knocking and the downward spiral gets a little farther downward.

I am not an angry person. I am a frustrated one. I am one that wants a moment’s peace. Some time to get my head on right.

The world rarely seems to allow for that.

Bold moves would be required.

And I am nothing if not timid. Shy. Introverted. I do not sell myself.

It makes me feel icky.

And it leaves me here, in the same place, in the same mire of frustration, and that, more than anything, is the source of whatever I feel.

Would that it were easier. Would that this frustration could be channeled into something productive. Would that this anger could claim righteous cures.

But when has anger cured anything? When has frustration, allowed to fester, made things better?

These are the questions I ask going forward.

These are the questions that haunt me.

Target: 200 words
Written: 389 words, comic: Romance #1