The Rage Inside

I have a friend who recently had a miscarriage. Her second, actually. She has been using her blog to write about her feelings, so I've been privvy to them all, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The ugly appeared in today's post, when she admitted that she wants to slap and spit on all the pregnant women she sees. This comment shocked me.

Yes. I know she's angry. I know she's grieving. However, I don't understand the violent envy aimed at random people... people she doesn't know. People who have nothing to do with her miscarriage. People who deserve to be happy.

And yes, she also deserves to be happy. I'm not saying she doesn't. I am saying that I don't understand the magnitude of her rage that is directed at others.

I made the mistake of writing about this in another blog of mine... one that's read by a core group of friends. And, now I feel like the "bad guy" because I appear to be insensitive to what she's going through.

I'm not. Insensitive, that is. I might be a bad guy, though. God knows, but he's not telling.

But back to the point: I simply don't understand the desire to cause harm to strangers, just because they have something she doesn'tt have.

Someone pointed out to me that anger is one of the Five Stages of Grief, and went on to say that in that regard, her anger is normal and healthy. And again I say, yes while it is "normal" to feel anger, is it normal to want to slap and spit on random pregnant women? That doesn't seem like a healthy anger to me.

It's just not this one friend, though. It's all the others I've known in my lifetime... the single ones that get angry when another one of us gets engaged. The married ones who are angry when us singles get to just up and go at the drop of a hat. The ones in debt who get angry at their friends who have money to burn.

Believe me, I get envy. But I don't get the anger part of it. Rather, I don't get the RAGE part of it. I suppose envy is a form of anger. But rage... that's another story altogether.