Violence

I carry violent urges within me.

They rise when triggered by frustration or by desire for revenge. They live at the back of my consciousness, like in a prison.

It's like a violent being is a prisoner in the back of my consciousness, and he seems very tightly locked up. Even when I have tried to bring him out, I feel unable to do so. And he's always making noise. Shouting, clanging on the bars, or raging in his cell. If I am busy, I have something to do, and keep myself busy, I forget he is there. I go along my day, planning plans and completing tasks, and I smile outwardly and feel jovial and feel useful in the world.

But when my world quiets down, when I have no one to show my smile to, when I have no task to focus on, his voice sometimes returns. I can hear him again, clanging at the bars, demanding to be let out, mocking my lethargy and my uselessness when I do nothing. In the silence I hear him, and I have always felt him somewhere, at least since I was 12.

Its urges come in two specific forms. It wishes to rage against people around me, whether towards a focused antagonist, or against everyone around me indiscriminately, and attack anyone who is close enough to damage.

In the focused form, it wishes to suddenly stand tall and straight, look at the other person directly in the eyes, and see his/her puzzled look when he notices my sudden change in behavior. The next few movements I feel like a single sweeping graceful movement. I launch myself towards him at full speed, grab him/her by the neck, full-on across the front of his throat, and land without losing momentum. Grounding myself firmly in a split second, with my weight having brought him off-balance, I pull on his neck with both my hands with all the force and weight my body can muster, and I swing his body straight on towards the ground, against a nearby wall or window, or against a metallic rail, like I would a sack of potatoes. If thrust upon a wall or window, I would firmly ground myself again, then kick him as damagingly as possible on the most easily-accessible vulnerable area. A steel-pointed toe kick into his abdomen to pierce into his bowels, a crushing two-legged stomp on his ribs if he's down on the ground, or a throat-smashing stomp that crushes his windpipe and prevents him from breathing evermore.

And if he was thrust onto a metallic bar, I then press his legs under the bar and kick his torso above and behind the bar, aiming to snap his spine in two, and have him hang inert over the railing, like an old towel of flesh.

The other form of violence my urge visualizes is a cutting form. It imagines people around me, whether enemies or consoler or bystanders - what they are is irrelevant. I have a cutting implement, powerful like a lightsaber but much longer, and I wield it. I crouch midway while holding my sword, then with my outstretched arms, I spin around one or two full revolutions with a swift swipe, and everyone around me is cut down into two pieces, across their waists. And I leave them all for dead. And sometimes there is a specific person around me, someone who I mean to especially shock/surprise with this act, with the intent of proving to them that I do have power and rage within me, and that I am not to be trifled with.

I feel it is telling that this part of me has accompanied me for all of my adolescent and adult life. I have never given it the manifestation it desires, yet it does not go away. Whether I experience joy, sadness, frustration, calm, and even what seems like enlightened moments of introspection, these violent urges remain, and I have been keeping them prisoner for most of my lifetime.

I feel them in my body when they come. In times of frustration or of anger, when I feel unjustly treated or abused, my body heats up with anger. My muscles twitch, and I know exactly which poses and places I would take to launch myself at him from which specific angle, which direction to throw him onto, which piece of furniture he would hit, onto which edges and corners he would be the most damaged, and which part of his body I would endeavour to crush, pierce, or snap. I feel it in my muscles, my body readies itself automatically in a flash. And then, reminding myself of the social and legal implications such an action would have, I take a deep breath, impose my reason upon my body, and seek another manner to sort out the situation.

And every time I do this, it hurts. My body hurts, in my solar plexus. It feels like a power, a heat that wants to come out of my solar plexus gets suppressed, shut in, and the intense heat and pressure cooks inside a small container in my solar plexus, and it hurts me. And I often cry instead, frustrated at my inability for true expression.

In the last five months, I have been feeling just such a constant discomfort in this exact area. Exactly along my midline, just below my ribcage, I now feel a constant, unrelenting ache. I respond to it instinctively by eating and eating, and eating some more, perhaps to numb the sensation down a little. I seek tasks, I look for entertainment, sometimes desperately, I notice, seemingly unable to not feel discomfort.

It is barely painful, but it is a constant discomfort that prevents me from ever feeling calm. Activity, eating, and movement all mask the sensation enough for my mind to go somewhere else. But in the last few weeks, I have had enough idle time for myself that I can no longer ignore it, and tonight I haven't been able to sleep. I suspect the recurrent emotional repressions have produced a physical anomaly near my stomach or intestine, and I am concerned about my physical health.

I somewhat hope that by giving these violent urges any voice, even if only a textual description of what it wants to do, something in it can be released or loosened, and perhaps it can help my body process this unease.