Grab a friend, start a fire!

I, having never lit a match in my life, decided that this week I would start a fire. 

Now, I wasn’t planning on doing anything too crazy. I mean, hell, if I can’t even light my rose- and coconut-scented candle, I’m certainly not equipped to conduct a roaring wildfire. Or perhaps my inaptitude lends itself better to the creation of such inferno-style accidents — hopefully, I’m not tempting fate here.

Regardless, I decided that this week I would create a very special kind of fire. A fury fire. I know what you’re thinking: “Oh brother, we already have a wack-job on the loose and now some idiot’s gonna teach her how to light a match.” So I ask that you kindly remove 911 from your speed dial lest you be included in this fury fire of mine.

A fury fire is, in essence, a small handcrafted fire that is used to burn one’s grievances. In more specific terms, a person may sit down, write out a few letters laced with anger, negative emotion, or dare I say fury, and then burn them in a fire to release negative emotions — specifically, ones harbored toward those who had the pleasure of getting a letter addressed to them.

Are the merits of the fury fire empirically proven? By no means. But if enough Quora users swear by its healing properties, that’s certainly good enough for me to give it a try.

I’m not a person who walks around with a veritable knapsack of fury strapped to her back. No, I like to think that any baggage I carry with me comes in a more subtle form, like a handbag or pocketbook of sorts. But I think that we all — unless you’ve reached a level of enlightenment that I personally can only aspire to — harbor some resentment or hurt toward others in our pasts. And we all have different ways of dealing with this pain.

While some may scream into pillows and curse out ex-boyfriends’ names, or find very creative ways to etch their car keys into others’ motor vehicles, I find that my pain and resentment turns inward more often than outward. 

Anger is not a frequent visitor in my pocketbook of baggage. I am more often visited by self-blame and hurt feelings, which makes it harder to let go of unresolved pain in interpersonal conflict. I’m not able to just get mad and get over things: I sit and I wallow and I ruminate and I play things over tenfold. And, of course, I cry tears the size of Texas.

Despite my skepticism at the supposed healing properties of setting my personal grievances aflame, I certainly have some people from my checkered past that haunt the back of my mind, so why not try to get angry and burn these qualms? It couldn’t make things any worse, right? 

Regardless, before I set matches to the lighter (or however the hell I’m supposed to do this), I had to set pen to paper first and write some honest-to-goodness hate letters.

I sat down a few days ago with the empty, cobweb-collecting journal that I’ve had since my sophomore year of high school and felt … awkward. I waited for the anger to arrive like a farmer trying to coax his prize-winning hogs toward a balanced breakfast. C’mere, fury! Heeeere, fury fury fury! Yet, none arrived, neither oinking nor squealing. I squinted hard, trying to think about my severed relationships, the times where I’ve felt the shock of betrayal or the sharp slap of someone’s words on my cheek. But I couldn’t conjure up anything past slight frustration at my inability to just get mad, dammit!

Needless to say, I opted to try again another time, hopefully with fewer swine-related metaphors.

To spare you the sappy details, let me just say that once I got things going, it was a pretty emotional and snot-filled experience (I did tell you I cry a lot). My letters ranged from the classic and somewhat expected “Dear Mom” to a big ’ole “Up yours!” to that one boy in high school who was just … needlessly difficult. I resisted any urge for self-blame or rationalization; these letters were supposed to be nothing short of character assassination, and far be it for me to break the rules.

Then came the fun part.

I told my friends, who are used to putting out my fires on the regular, to maybe stay indoors on Sunday evening for safety purposes. Which apparently wasn’t a hard ask because, on the long-awaited day of my fury fire, God said, “I hate you, Irena,” and it started to rain. It didn’t stop, either.

But, like Adele, I did not shy away from a challenge nor a minor juxtaposition. Or rather, my dear friend Miles didn’t — he thankfully (for the greater public’s sake) did most of the grunt work to actually start the fire. Which, despite the downpour, functioned surprisingly well! 

Though I wouldn’t be surprised if, after this experience, he’s got some grievances to burn himself.

I placed my five Hate Letters in the fire one by one, saying the words “I forgive you” after each one began to char, and “Dear Mom” started to look a lot more like “D   r Mo.” 

Miles stood hunched and squinty eyed over the fire with a light-blue umbrella covered in pink flamingos striking various poses, protecting the flames from the elements.

It was very, very difficult to keep a straight face. 

I watched the smoke from the fire flit and billow into the distance and imagined that my negativity was traveling with it, dissipating into nothingness. Key word: imagined. Now, I’ll be the first to say it: I feel like the whole burning thing served more to nurse my own amusement than it did to heal. It’s likely that I’ve never felt more ridiculous in my life.

Maybe it was the downpour, perhaps it was The Michigan Daily photographer forced to stand in the rain while I incinerated a hate letter to my high school heart-throb, or it might have been those hilarious flamingos. But I felt nothing transient — just shock at how you actually can start and sustain a fire in the rain. Who woulda thunk?

And by chanting “I forgive you” at my handwritten letters, it felt like I was trying to forgive the letters for a paper cut or something, rather than actually forgiving the people whose actions still weigh on me today.

So perhaps I wouldn’t wholeheartedly recommend this process to someone attempting to let go of past hurt or unresolved pain. But you know what I would recommend?

Writing it down and letting it out. 

Though writing my negativity down didn’t necessarily feel like an elephant was being lifted off my chest or anything, it did help me pinpoint some of the ways that I was still hurting. And sometimes, throughout the hustle and bustle of life, it can be hard to identify what’s really weighing us down. Though therapeutic letter writing is not an unconventional practice, it did feel strange to emit so much anger and negativity toward others on paper, and I was honestly a little surprised that I had such a surplus within me to expel in the first place. I don’t know if writing things out necessarily helped me move forward or made me feel loads better, but it definitely did let out some emotion that desperately needed release. And that feels like a step in the right direction.

But hey, if your goal isn’t necessarily to let go of all your grievances, and it is instead to ball out on a Sunday afternoon, the fury fire has my utmost recommendation. Grab a friend, crack open a cold one and start that fire!

What’s the worst that can happen?

Statement Columnist Irena Tutunari can be reached at tutunari@umich.edu.

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