It was not the first time he had read it, of course.  And he had considered simply deleting it; flushing it into whatever electronic oblivion deleted things went.

Maybe there’s a big electronic farm in a bunker in Nevada somewhere, like that farm people tell kids their dog went to after they pumped it full of drugs and then buried it in the backyard.

But he couldn’t.  Some part of him, of course, kept it for the same reason that that same part of him — some murky little nodule in the nether regions of his amygdala — wouldn’t let him delete memories, feelings; it shoved them into a box which it pretended to lock, with a smirk, only to fling open whenever it goddamn well chose.

Having a quiet evening with your wife?  Hey, here’s a mental video of that argument you had with that asshole roommate, enjoy!  Let your blood pressure rise!  You want to punch something now, don’t you?  Oh, don’t you worry, I have THOUSANDS of these.  And I never sleep.  Ponder that one, asshole!

He had a list of phrases that he wanted to eradicate.  “Let go of your anger” was near the top of the list.  His friend Sasha — a loud, zaftig, gorgeous, brilliant, unrelentingly strong, gleefully profane woman who was, coincidentally (and subconsciously speaking, maybe not so coincidentally) both his closest friend and a gifted psychotherapist, had engaged him in a spirited debate on this matter.

“So…what the fuck does that even mean?”

“Does what mean?”

“‘Let go of your anger.’  As in, what, I turn off the switch that controls whatever makes me want to punch my father in the face?”

“Come on–”

“You know what I mean.  I’m not talking ‘anger management’ or whatever…choosing not to act on feelings, yadda yadda.  Self-control, I get the concept.  It’s just…well, what makes it more than another vacuous-ass cliche?  ‘Hey, this fits on a picture with a background of a sunset over an ocean, let’s go with it!'”

“You finished?”

“For now.”

“Of course it doesn’t mean turning a switch–”

“FLIPPING a switch.”

“Bite me.  FLIPPING a switch, you Aryan shithead.  And no, of course it doesn’t.  It doesn’t mean going all Mr. Spock, and shutting off emotions, or pretending that they don’t exist — which actually makes them even more powerful, more destructive.  Like a prisoner in solitary confinement, left alone with all his…his rage, his meshugas, until he’s defined by it, and he finally gets out a thousand times more dangerous than when he went in.  It’s more like…”

‘What…fighting the anger with logic?  Feeling that…surge, that rush, and choosing to…I don’t know…talk myself down?  Like, a pit bull is going for my balls, and my response is to calmly say ‘good boy…you’re not a real dog about to rip my nuts off, you’re an externalization of my collective childhood fears…that’s a good boy…’?”

“Really?”

A sigh.  “I know I’m being flippant…but, seriously, is that what it is?  Step back from it before it takes hold, look at it, think about where it comes from, take away its power?”

“That’s a little too formulaic, but…basically, yes.  We all find the image or the ‘practice’ that works best for us.  And that might work for you — you are great with images–”

“I’m ‘imaging’ you gloriously naked right now, so…agreed.”

“Remember when I said ‘bite me?’  Blow me.”

“Anytime.  So..what works for you?  I mean…how do YOU ‘let go?”

“That’s a really short question with several hours worth of answer, sweetie.  Which we’ll get to at some point…but for now, here it is: there’s no simple answer.  It’s basically everything you said, more or less, actually.  I take a step from my anger.  Sometimes I literally start watching my breathing, keeping still.  I look at the anger — look at where it comes from, look at WHO it comes from.  And — here’s the hardest part — I remind myself that I don’t deserve the part of the anger that’s directed at myself.  Because that’s really what’s happening when we rehash old hurts, isn’t it?  That’s why it’s so fucked up — because even when we THINK we’re re-telling a story in a way that makes us the righteous victim, even if we decide to re-write it, so we maybe end that one fight a little better, tell that person off, kick that kid’s ass — the act of letting that memory send us into a rage, it’s masochistic.  It hurts.  And sometimes it’s self-punishment.”