Anger Flashback

I would wake up to throbbing hot headaches in the middle of the night. My head felt like an ember. And the smell. I have to remember this is how it used to be.

I was so angry. And just because I wasn't screaming didn't mean the rage wasn't there. It was always beneath the surface as aggression, annoyance, sarcasm, jealousy, social outrage.

These memories come in flashbacks, sudden and crystalline. I was folding clothes this evening and tears poured down my face. Another memory. My chest filled with steaming phlegm.

Another moment: yelling at a server, flinging a cup across a diner because the service wasn't fast enough.

These were people helping me, serving me, spending their lives and time to make sure I had enough.

I stopped trusting my sense of smell. I no longer felt clean air on a normal day. I smelled smoke. This wasn't imaginary or a dream. Smoke that smoldered a gray, dry cloud. I was numb to it so much that many of my smell memories are tinged with charcoal dust. I could not smell a flower, the scent was too subtle, too easily blocked out.

I don't even remember what I was angry about. Waking up made me ready to fight. Sleeping was a battle of blocking out the day's events and hoping for a black wall of oblivion to blot out the rage. And when the wall disappeared behind the sunlight, all the anger was ready to go.