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Anger had been Franky’s preferred emotion for most of her life. She secretly loved the way her insides felt when the rage boiling in the pit of her stomach finally let loose and wreaked havoc on any unsuspecting victims. Her anger had been her protector when the adults around her continued to fail her time and time again. Instead, she became her own caretaker. And when she was too scared, she’d switch off and let anger take over. She knew that it would keep her safe and keep the bad guys away.
But somehow her caregiver became more and more powerful. Her anger had somehow shifted into the driver’s seat and no matter how hard she tried to stay in control, anger always won. It raged up at the worst times. She had lost countless jobs because she just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. The friendships that she had managed to form bouncing from foster home to foster home had dwindled significantly. No one wanted to be friends with the unpredictable and vicious being she had become. And so she just gave up. She gave in and let it take control. The one saving grace was that anger still managed to keep her relatively safe.
Then one day she was standing over Mike Pennisi’s savagely burned face. At first she didn’t know how he had ended up on the floor screaming in agony. That was when she felt the weight of the wok in her hand. She froze as the lump in her throat began to form.
Now here she was stuck away to rot in a cell all because she couldn’t control herself. She had resigned to being the one to carefully sweep up the broken pieces that her anger left in its wake. The worst part was she could see the tinge of fear in the eyes of everyone around her. As if they were waiting on bated breath to see what her anger would do next. Who would be her next victim? What would set her off that day? She both loved and hated the looks. On one hand she felt protected, but on the other she had driven every single person away. Safety had come at a price.
Until a five foot two blonde walked into her life and completely uprooted everything she thought she knew. Once again, Franky had let her rage take over as she carelessly hurled book after book around the library. She inspected the psychologist’s face methodically. She kept waiting to see the look of fear take over, for her to take a step backwards towards safety in those blue heels. But she never did. Her expression never wavered. She didn’t step back, in fact she stepped closer towards the beast. Franky was utterly baffled by her reaction. Why wasn’t she afraid like the rest of them? Even after she had been sent to the slot, there the blonde was smiling at her through the glass. The lack of fear had rocked Franky to her very core. She had stayed up most of the night contemplating what it meant exactly.
Bridget had been the first one to stand up bravely in the face of Franky’s unbridled anger. She challenged everything Franky thought she knew about herself. She broke down the brick walls around her heart that Franky had built after years of disappointment and hurt. She had come at her like a bulldozer all the while the slight smile never left her face. I’m not afraid of you, the smile spoke to Franky in a calm voice. And then one day she just…stopped. She stopped snapping at others. She stopped the vicious attacks. She took the keys back from her anger and took back her control. It was like she could finally breathe again.
Years later, she still occasionally could feel her hands ball into fists as she sorted through her emotions. She knew Bridget could see her wrestling with the instinct, but then ultimately the real Franky would win. In those moments where she could finally calm herself down, she would see the look of pride beaming across Bridget’s beautiful face. Because nothing in the world could quell Franky’s anger quite like her Bridget.