Venom

As churning cream produces butter, and as twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up anger produces strife.

—Proverbs 30:33

Earlier this year, a friend of mine made me really mad. Crazy mad. I felt small and scared and out of control, and like my friend was making decision after decision to hurt me. Every time I heard from her or about her, it hurt. It was like there was sharp glass on her hands and every time she got near me, she cut me, even if she swore she didn’t mean to.

For a while, it brought me so much joy to be angry with her. I exhausted myself imagining the same conversation again and again, but slightly different each time, saying clever things and finding loopholes in her lame arguments. I was the captain of the debate team in my mind, and I was very busy debating her.

I kept thinking about her, and the anger and the venom were starting to feel familiar. When I thought about what happened, the muscles in my neck and back scrunched up, and I felt bad at the base of my skull. Then it got harder to breathe, and it felt like something was rotting inside me, the way something goes bad in the refrigerator.