Anger. The hot, bitter, heart racing emotion. Red faced, ear blowing steam, bug-eyed emotion. It’s an important emotion because it can motivate us. It’s a dangerous emotion because it can destroy us. What we do with it determines what it does to us.

My depression makes me many things, but deep down, I have a burning anger inside of me. Like a volcano that sleeps for centuries, my anger can hide in plain site. But like that volcano, when it erupts, it’s a disaster and people get hurt. My insides explode and spill out onto anyone and anything in their path. And when it’s done, it goes back to sleep like nothing happened. But it did. It destroyed the beautiful world that was around us.

Like volcanoes, nature too can be sleepy or destructive. It can create trees that give us our air or plants that feed our bodies. I can blow winds hard enough to throw trees that weigh tons or soft enough to blow the hair from my eyes. When volcanoes erupt, nature sleeps, but slowly wakes. The destruction isn’t permanent because nature will always come back and reclaim this planet. It just takes time.

My anger bursts out of me at times and hurts those around me. When it goes back to sleep, I feel the devastation around me like burnt soil. I also know, however, that my nature will rise up and fix what it can, when it can. It won’t be right away and it might not be the same again, but my nature will always come back to rebuild me. And that is where my hope comes from.

Hope’ is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. ~Emily Dickinson