When I’m angry, I have no control over my emotions. My closest friend is afraid to be around me and worries about me because he fears I’ll just explode on him. He recommended I seek a therapist or get medical help, but I feel like I do not need to. Over the past 6-7 years (I’m 18 and in college), I have been beating myself up on the inside over issues that marked me as “different” from everybody else. I always distanced myself, thought I was weird, not normal, thought I had aspergers and antisocial disorder even. I left the middle school I was at to get away from my friend group because I did not want to negatively influence them. Already many of them I was emotionally hurtful to, causing them to cry or feel bad. I manipulated them into feeling that way because I felt bad, I was bullied too by the “popular” kids, so my way of coping was shuffling off the pain and hurt to other people. Though I left for a different school, my closest friend stayed with me, all the way up through college. Since he said he was afraid to be around me, I have been unable to sleep. In one of the classes I’m taking, the professor spoke about feeling shame, the feeling of being fundamentally flawed. I realized that it was shame that influenced everything I did. What I cannot help is the anger in response to this shame. At the gym, my close friend was annoyed by me and asked if I wanted to fight him, and I did, and he told me that I would not be able to beat him. He is far stronger than me. The only thing I could do was throw my water bottle at him and leave. He did not attack me. In a conversation much later about the instance, he said he wanted to punch me, but did not because anger is never the solution. He went all Gandhi on me. I wish I could be like Gandhi, but I’m human. Somehow, he seems perfect, or seems like everything I want to be. It sounds weird to say that, but in the years that I’ve known him, I have always wanted the looks he had, the ridiculously good grades, the women, the perfect body, his high alcohol tolerance, his good memory, and his ability to remain calm and above any situation, to control his emotions. During the conversation, he went off on other instances where I scared him that I hardly remember, like me saying “I’ll punch you as hard as I can” for something little or threatening something in another situation. He remembers everything. Just when I thought I was pulling out of that idea of shame and my severe depression (went to therapist for a while, parents would not allow medication), he brought me straight back into it. Is it wrong for me to feel these angry desires? To have hurt people? He is not the only person I have done physical harm to. In the past, I would kick my brother in a fight or throw objects at him, like a stapler, because I was so angry at what he had. He was popular, had women, and all that in middle school. I apologized to him recently, feeling bad for all the things I did to him. Somehow, right now, I do not feel fit for society based on what my friend said. I do not feel anger toward him anymore, not towards anyone right now, I just feel empty and wrong on the inside. Like the parts in my head don’t quite fit like everyone else’s parts fit. is this normal? I don’t know what to do other than rant online.