Andrea the therapist told me to scream.
I laughed.
“I’m serious,” she said.
“You mean like go into the woods and scream?”
“Or just do it in the house. Tell Steven you’re going to scream and let loose.”
Yeah, no, that’s not happening. There are so many very good reasons for this not to happen, the first being that my retired husband is always home and would be entirely too gleeful and engaged for it to ever be therapy. I can see him bouncing on his toes and joining in, repressed theatre kid that he is.
“Do it in the car then.”
I tried. Again and again, I tried to scream in the car and here’s what I learned:
I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO SCREAM.
I make an “eek a mouse” sound, if there’s a mouse. Snakes inspire a comic, little girl scream, followed immediately by manic laughter. Andrea wants a real, from-the-gut scream, a roar, a bellow, a sound to purge the rage. Expel the demons. It sounds so seductive, so healing. The last time my body made such a noise was during childbirth. An involuntary, primitive roar from the deep hollows of my core. A sound that I almost couldn’t identify as me — “who is making that sound?”
I want that. I want to scream, howl from the bowels, let it all out and start new. But I don’t know how. Alone in the car, I picked long country straightaways with no houses, no human activity (what would they think about the woman in the red car screeching by?) and opened my mouth. Out came a squeak, very eek-a-mouse. Tiny and high-pitched, comic and ridiculous. I squeaked and laughed at myself. I tried to access the deeper stuff, but ultimately felt self-conscious and too much.
What does this mean? Why and when did I lose the ability to roar? I’m sure I filled the big world with my own thunder when I was a tiny girl — why now, when the world is so rage-making and life has piled up the insults for 60 years, now when there’s so much to scream about, am I unable to access it? What-would-they-think and too-much are, I guess, very much my gendered, 1960s, late-boomer brand. Which of course is utter bullshit.
I googled “how to scream” and got a lot of hits about singing and theatre. I don’t want a stage scream, I’m not trying to convince an audience of anything. This isn’t a song. I need to authentically scream, a good old-fashioned yawp from the pit of despair, a truth-coming-out-of-her-well-to-shame-mankind shriek. I want to SCREAM.
I’m starting to connect some dots, from the rage to the screaming to the pain. The anxiety. The general fuckery of midlife suffering. In perfect timing (thank you, universe), I stumbled on
’s essay about her journey with pain and holy wow it’s me. The various pains here and there that have shadowed me off and on for too long now; the seeking and searching, imaging and pills, physical therapy and odd appliances. I, too, am sick to death of these pain flares that seem to have no explanation. Except, maybe, RAGE.It does make some sense. I have become increasingly acquainted with my rage in the (late) middle of my life and it is explosive and potent, alarming even, at times. Is the rage eating me from the inside? Sure, let’s try that because nothing else works and it’s all expensive and time consuming.
Knight writes about The Mindbody Prescription, John Sarno’s book about the buried rage that just may be causing much of our pain epidemic. She writes:
“If you have chronic back, neck, hip, or leg pain (or headaches, indigestion or other GI issues, or even a skin condition like eczema) you may find what I’m about to tell you seriously life changing.
Or you may file it away under “Yeah, right” and then in three months or a year or two years, after you’ve tried everything else (twice) you might remember it and search your email for “Sarah Knight back pain” and—if you’re like me—you might be desperate enough to give it an exceedingly skeptical try.”
I, with my endless pain and haughty demeanor, dismissed it initially as airy-fairy, woo woo, “whackadoodle” bullshit. Looked right down my stupid little nose at it. But then, I literally spent a morning searching “Sarah Knight back pain” until I was rewarded with her essay and decided to give it a side-eyed try.
Dr. Sarno’s book is tedious and kind of annoying, but his thesis is interesting. He writes, “aging is enraging,” and how I aggressively nodded my superior little head in agreement. Yes, aging is enraging! Menopause is enraging! The news and the stupidity, the burning world and the patriarchy — it’s all enraging. Not to mention how mad I might be, from time to time, with the people I love (justified or not). I’m mad about my body and its pain, but also maybe the mad is making the pain?
Life is mad-making and it has to go somewhere. I’d love for it to go somewhere other than my back, hips, knees, and feet. I’d love for it to not be an accelerant for baseline anxiety. I’d love to throw it right back at the world that made me mad to begin with.
Andrea wants me to scream. Abby the acupuncturist has counseled “rage on the page.” Sarno and Sarah Knight suggest talking to the rage. I’m nothing if not a devoted little student, so I will rage on pages and throw them in the fire. I will mutter to my rage and try to rearrange the patterns that my mad little brain has built.
Here’s Knight discussing it with herself:
Once I made those connections, I would sit there and tell my brain—literally, out loud:
“We are not going to do this anymore. I know what’s going on here and it’s not helping. Thank you for your service, but let’s put your considerable powers to work for good instead of evil, m’kay? I need you to send ALL of the oxygen to my major muscle groups and stop it with your silly reindeer games.”
“I know what’s going on here and it’s not helping.”
I want this to work so badly.
I still don’t know how to scream. It must be a glorious and cathartic thing. I’ve linked this before (because it’s so good), but Sandra Tsing Loh’s essay, “The Bitch is Back,” captures it:
During menopause, a woman can feel like the only way she can continue to exist for 10 more seconds inside her crawling, burning skin is to walk screaming into the sea — grandly, epically, and terrifyingly, like a 15-foot-tall Greek tragic figure wearing a giant, pop-eyed wooden mask.
I haven’t yet committed to the bit. I’m a skeptic at heart, but the success rate is hard to ignore. As long as I’m still out here banging away at this thing called life, I might as well cozy up to my rage and see what foolishness it’s been up to. I’ll practice screaming in the car, rage on the page, have a chat with my brain. What have I got to lose?
Here’s the pain essay again. If you’re suffering, it’s worth a read:
Happy Fall!
Lisa 🍁
Things to share:
IS IT PERIMENOPAUSE OR THE FASCIST DEATH KNELL OF LATE-STAGE CAPITALISM?
Lauren Groff on Florence Welch: “Maybe I revel in her work because so much of it is simply overflowing with rage, her perfect voice embodying all that subsumed rage that I swallow every day and allowing it to bloom out into the world, a gorgeous shining pitch-black flower.”
- on why sex might be making us mad: “Then like a circular domino effect from hell — this intensified longing for sex as love that patriarchy bequeaths to men pressures his partner, which makes her retreat further, which increases his longing, which increases the pressure, which causes her further retreat and so on and so forth until the space in the middle of the bed freezes over.”
Speaking of pain and “this thing called life,” this piece about a Prince documentary that may never see the light of day is fascinating and (yes) enraging. Why can’t we have nice things?
Thrilled to have my essay, Now We Are 60, in Oldster Magazine. Thanks again to
!Can anyone tell me how to find my scream?
When I was in the depths of my divorce, a fellow divorcee told me to punch pillows and yell YOU HAD IT COMING YOU LUMPY FUCKERS!! Which I could only do for a few seconds before bursting out laughing but the punching was shockingly cathartic and so was the laughter. I also recommend ax throwing (bonus: good core workout).
I've been in nonstop negotiations with my body and now I know what it is telling me: "It's got to go somewhere." Thanks.
Here is what helps me to scream: stubbing my toe, running into a table corner with my thigh for the umpteenth time, anything that sends a sharp sudden pain. It acts like a can opener; all the rage comes gushing out. I don't plan it. It scares the dogs. And me.