Before I Learned Civility I Used to Scream Ferociously Any Time I Wanted
She carefully sets a table, painstakingly polishing the glasses and arranging the flowers. She does this all for a lover who can’t be bothered to even look her in the eye. So she forces him to confront her by crawling on the same table she so lovingly set up a few moments before and throwing every perfectly polished wine glass on the floor, half-woman, half-monster. Grendel’s mother in a marigold-yellow dress nostrils flaring.
This is just one of the many songs in the nearly three-hour-long Eras tour film, but “Tolerate It” stood out to me because I had not seen a woman so visibly angry in a long time, let alone Taylor Swift. I was in awe, envious almost. And it wasn’t just “Tolerate It,” but the waves of fury were flying off every slammed piano key as she sang “Champagne Problems.” Before she started the song, she said she wrote it during the pandemic and thought playing it for a full stadium would be cathartic. Some songs she sings on that tour go harder than others depending on how close she is to the actual emotions she felt when she wrote them (see “Lover” post Joe breakup and now with Travis), but “Champagne Problems” is still so close you can almost see the flames coming out her nose. Sure, Taylor has a lot of songs about anger, “Mad Woman” being the most obvious, but to see the anger so viscerally was almost freeing.
Recently someone said to me, “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.” I said, “ You didn’t hurt my feelings; I was angry.” They replied, “Oh well, I’m sorry I hurt your anger.” I could tell the response made them uncomfortable. Sadness or wounded pride—those are easy to understand, but anger? Anger is hard and awkward.
And anger is often my default emotion. When my first therapist made me describe what emotion I was feeling, it was usually anger. Maybe it was actually sadness or frustration, but anger was always the closest emotion for me when someone cut me off in traffic, when I got slighted at work, when a friend canceled on me again, when I got into political disagreements with close friends. I would joke I was like that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song Josh Chan sings “Angry Mad.” I even did kick-boxing for a while.
This has always been true for me. Just like my hair has always been brown and I’ve always been short, I’ve always been angry. As a little kid, I’d have such extravagant temper tantrums that I’d throw every stuffed animal in my room around and then later methodically and calmly rearrange them. I had an “anger problem.” I would throw things or spit on kids in class I didn’t like. “Before I learned civility I used to scream ferociously any time I wanted,” Taylor Swift sings on “Seven.” I’ve never related to a lyric more, but the key line here is actually “before I learned civility.” Before I tamped down my emotions to make them palatable for others, to be a good little girl, to be a professional employee, to be an adult. Anger in adults isn’t appropriate. It’s hard and awkward. For me, it has dissolved friendships at worst or created hostility with friends and family. “And my words shoot to kill when I'm mad I have a lot of regrets about that,” Taylor sings on “This is Me Trying.”
So what happens if I am still always angry but cannot express it? I scream in my car. I journal late into the night when I should be asleep. I slowly implode because there usually isn’t a healthy outlet for it. I’ve been swallowing a lot of my anger lately. From office politics to Israel/Palestine politics, I’ve had a lot of conversations where on the surface I’m polite and respectful. I’m often the least reactive person in the room. But I’m actually ready to explode. I really have stronger opinions than I let on. But I’m trying to be respectful of the environment I’m in or the people I’m with. I don’t write about work publicly, but why not talk about Israel. I’m a non-zionist, pro-Palestine Jew in a mostly Zionist temple, and I always feel like I shouldn’t even be there. Arguing with Jewish friends in my DMs or joining the first meeting of my temple’s anti-semitism task force and outing myself as a pro-Palestine Jew make me automatically apologize for my opinion instead of standing up for it. Some of it is I don’t believe in shaming people into changing their politics, but some of it is that anger is hard and awkward. Other people can yell at me, but I have to be civil as a woman, as someone with the unpopular opinion in my community, as someone with anger issues who can’t even acknowledge her emotions lest they get the best of her.
The thing is pushing down all this anger has made me feel like shit lately. I’m exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. I’m tired all the time. Unmotivated and left to scroll my phone instead of truly refresh. Forget writing—for myself, my novel, this newsletter, even my job. It’s like I become a container for everyone else’s emotions but my own. Instead I only feel anxiety, an undigested emotion of its own like acid reflux coming back up. Because really letting myself feel the anger isn’t allowed. Even Taylor knows this. As she sings on “Mad Woman,” “And when you say I seem angry I get more angry and there's nothin' like a mad woman what a shame she went mad no one likes a mad woman.”
As a child, I think I used to let my rage overtake me because it was the only way to get people to listen. I was a short little kid who got bullied a lot. But I’m an adult now, albeit still short, and no one is dumping Goldfish crumbs in my hair on the school bus anymore. I know screaming isn’t the way to express myself or be taken seriously, and what makes me most angry is when other people are allowed to get away with it. Mostly men.
I’m still going to be angry. It’s just who I am and just being a person. And I still think screaming at people isn’t productive, but I have to acknowledge it. Anger is kindling, and if I don’t tend to it, then it burns me from the inside out. “If I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too,” Taylor sings on maybe her angriest song, “My Tears Ricochet.” But anger can also be fuel for art. I’m never going to have my own Eras tour, but my best coping mechanism for my anger is writing. Those journal entries are where I start processing, and sometimes I don’t stop until I write a newsletter like this one or even an entire novel.
Butter Chicken
This classic Indian dish is the perfect dinner for these dark and cold nights. This New York Times Cooking recipe from Amandeep Sharma and Sam Sifton is so rich and satisfying—even more so on the next day—with its cream-based tomato curry. Don’t miss the fact you need to marinate this ahead of time!
Ingredients
1½ cups full-fat Greek yogurt
2 Tbs. lemon juice
1½ Tbs. ground turmeric
2 Tbs. garam masala
2 Tbs. ground cumin
3 pounds chicken thighs, on the bone
¼ pound unsalted butter
4 tsp. neutral oil, like vegetable or canola oil
2 medium-size yellow onions, peeled and diced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
3 Tbs. fresh ginger, peeled and grated or finely diced
1 Tbs, cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick or ground cinnamon
2 medium-sized tomatoes, diced or one can tomatoes
2 red chiles, like Anaheim, or 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and diced
Kosher salt to taste
⅔ cup chicken stock, low-sodium or homemade
1½ cups cream
1½ teaspoons tomato paste
3 Tbs. almond flour
½ bunch cilantro leaves, stems removed
Directions
Whisk together the yogurt, lemon juice, turmeric, garam masala and cumin in a large bowl. Put the chicken in, and coat with the marinade. Cover, and refrigerate (for up to a day).
In a large pan over medium heat, melt the butter in the oil until it starts to foam. Add the onions, and cook, stirring frequently, until translucent. Add the garlic, ginger and cumin seeds, and cook until the onions start to brown.
Add the cinnamon stick, tomatoes, chiles and salt, and cook until the chiles are soft, about 10 minutes.
Add the chicken and marinade to the pan, and cook for 5 minutes, then add the chicken stock. Bring the mixture to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, uncovered, for approximately 30 minutes.
Stir in the cream and tomato paste, and simmer until the chicken is cooked through, approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
Add the almonds, cook for an additional 5 minutes and remove from the heat. Garnish with the cilantro leaves.
Tess Recommends:
-I forgot to watch Peacock’s Based on a True Story when it came out this summer, but this satire of true crime is hilarious and addictive. Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina play a couple whose financial life is even worse than their marriage, but then they discover their plumber is probably a serial killer and decide to make a podcast with him. The premise is super absurd and sometimes the show goes off the rails, but it’s fun, original, and one of the few TV shows that captured my attention lately.