January 22, 2003 | 10:23 AM

Needless to say I�ve always had problems with anger. I think a lot of people have.

When I was younger, I never felt I had any right to get angry at anything. Anger was always accompanied by an oppressive guilt, like the cork stuffed back into a bottle of champagne. With no real outlets, anger ate me up inside. It congealed and became depression and self loathing.

Some time within the past two years, the cork blew off the bottle and it came spewing forth. The plutonic outbursts of an unbridled energy force I hadn�t fully ever recognized made itself known to me. It was overwhelming and wild and being in it was like trying to control a hurricane. I couldn�t stop it. I would become possessed by anger, flung to and fro. And so I dealt with many things in some highly inappropriate ways, both on this forum and in �real life�. It was very frightening to finally recognize this vast part of myself and let it out. But it was part of a process, and now I recognize how necessary it was.

I had always felt I needed someone else�s permission to get angry and I was finally rebelling against that-�like a defiant teenager screaming at her parents, �you can�t tell me what to do�, my anger finally asserted itself and insisted on having a right to exist whether anyone else wanted it to or not.

Now finally, I am coming to the next stage in getting acquainted with anger. I am not at the mercy of my anger anymore then I�m at the mercy of anything else. I can acknowledge it. I can feel it. I can sit back and let it course through my body like molton lava. I can bend it and direct and think about it. See, I�ve always been able to dissect and analyze every single emotion to death�especially the �good ones� (i.e. love, happiness, sexuality, etc.) All except anger and now, through all this, I can. And that feels so good.

I feel like I�ve had the most massive breakthrough of my entire life, and believe me I am not overstating this.

Panic and depression and anger and guilt and regret have all been holding hands with each other, sitting shiveh in my psyche for way too long. It�s time they all took a break from one another and learned to become the autonomous emotions they actually are.