The Angry Puppy

THE ANGRY PUPPY

Scientists are brilliant aren’t they? I mean, really, really brilliant. Not that that matters, but they did find the gene that causes depression. Some people are just genetically programmed to be miserable as hell. Depression isn’t about anything : sometimes it just happens. Other times, it comes as a direct result of events.

About three years ago I was suffering from depression. A low level, long term form of depression as the direct result of several things : being desperately underpaid in a job with no prospects, living in a freezing, spartan flat above a chip shop in Walsall’s redlight district, and a failed relationship that ended awfully and acrimoniously whilst simultaneously plunging me into poverty.

So, understandably I was suffering from depression. But I did what I had to do : I plunged on, broke through, continued. This state is sometimes known, as Peaches delightfully sang, as fucking the pain away. Instead what I was doing was transforming my depression into energy and activity, doing things to alleviate the boredom, the inactivity of the blues. Apparently this state of intense activity, this channelling of depression into creative activity, is known as Hypomania.

THE (incredible) HULK

Spike Milligan had it. Birds have it. Bees have it. Let’s do it, lets fall in lurve.

And so, if the scientists ever take my DNA apart they’ll probably discover that, whilst everyone has a depressive gene, mine is more prone to a state of resistance than others. Nonetheless, they’ll probably discover that I instead, have a highly developed Angry Gene. A natural prediliction to be generally grumpy and furious.

Sometimes I feel like The Hulk. No, scratch that. The Incredible Hyulk. Because being known purely as Hulk is so damn Hollywood. No longer, in this age of X-Men and Spidermen, is merely a 15 foot green man fuelled by rage incredible anymore.

We are so jaded.

But I’m getting off the subject, as Cobra Bubbles might say.

If I were a superhero I’d either be Mr. Furious, whose awesome rage can extend as far as raising his voice and getting frustrated at not being God, or The Tidier, who seeks to impose order into the chaos by alphabeticising his CD’s. And those of everyone around me. It takes all my energy not to knock on my neighbours doors and offer to alphabeticise, then chronologise, their CD and DVD collections. And then reorder their cups by size and colour. Especially when I can’t sleep in the middle of the night.

MR.FURIOUS

Anyway, if scientists ever evaluated my DNA they’d find that I must be in possession of an Angry Gene. A gene that means I have a prediliction towards fury. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

It’s the little things that drive me so mad. The simple inability of the train stations to have two people at the ticket booths so it doesn’t take me fifteen minutes to buy a ticket, the fact that McDonalds only take cash, the fact that you can’t use a mobile phone to ring someone and tell them you can’t get reception and therefore can’t ring them, the fact that you can’t buy a can of liquid to drink in central London for under 100p. The simple things that are so complicated, and simply don’t need to be made difficult. The fact that they can be done better, quicker, more efficiently, more thoughtfully, and I’m not in a place to make it so.

Of course, I’ve changed a lot over time. My life used to be so unrelaxed. I couldn’t relax, couldn’t switch off. I was such a dreadful snob. I refused to enjoy myself ; everyone else was just a visionless, stupid worm, only I was cool, and the world was full of dumb slugs who watched football, didn’t realise that all workers were slaves, and that entertainment was just a way of placating the masses for their slavery.

What an earnest, humourless old bore I was. These days, I realised that life is, to some extent, what you make of it – your every action is a decision, and all of these decisions lead to your destiny. If you are unhappy, you should strive to change your life so that you are happy.

Besides, being an furious little Anger Puppy was no fun. It was just a bit boring. I decided to just stop being so… blinkered. To relax more. Enjoy life. Smell flowers. And not to send anyone an email that tells you to dance like you think that no-one is watching.

Because I needed to be an Angry Young Man. Though now I’m 30, I’m an Angry Old Man. It’s the only part of my youth I can still connect to. But I was a fool, and at least the fact that I knew I was a fool made me less of a fool than someone who doesn’t even know that they are. I think.

I won’t try to save the world of get angry about it. If other people want to screw up their lives, drink themselves to death, let them. I know I’m not like that. So that’s my contribution to the world.

So these rage, this fury, this anger is my energy. It drives me. Compels me. It often exhausts me with irrational, sleepless energy at times when I should be relaxing and somehow can’t. Without it though, I would be inert. Normal, even. Unproductive. I’d be boring.

I have to weigh it up. Do I want to be furious and productive, or calm, and boring?

Life should never be boring.

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws