I Still Get Angry

Day 256 – August 6, 2026

I am still angry. I do not talk about that part as much lately because anger is messy. Sadness is easier for people. Fear makes sense. Grief makes sense. Anger makes people nervous. Especially anger from women. Sad women get sympathy. Angry women get instructions.

Calm down. Move on. Do not let it control you. Focus on the positive.

No. Sometimes I am angry because anger is the correct response. I am angry that it happened. I am angry that somebody made choices that changed the way I move through my own home. I am angry that a knock on my door is no longer just a knock. I am angry that there are places on my own body that have become attached to memories I did not put there. I am angry that fear became part of my routine. I am angry at how much time it took.

How much energy. How much sleep. How many moments. How many versions of myself I had to rebuild. There is a version of anger that burns everything around it. I know that. I do not want to live there. But there is another kind of anger that clarifies. This is wrong. This mattered. I deserved better. I will not accept this again.

That anger has helped me. I think I needed it.

For a while I turned too much of everything inward. Why did I trust? Why did I go? Why did I freeze? Why did I not react differently? Why did I not see something sooner? Those questions are cruel. They pretend the victim was secretly the director. Like somewhere there was a control room and I simply pressed the wrong button.

There was not. Someone else made choices. That is where the responsibility belongs. It took me a long time to let my anger travel in the correct direction. Maybe part of that is because self blame creates the illusion of control. If I caused it somehow, then maybe I can guarantee it never happens again by behaving differently. That is seductive. It is also bullshit.

I can be careful. I can set boundaries. I can listen to my instincts. I can lock doors. I can avoid people. I can do everything “right” and still live in a world where other people have agency. That is terrifying. It is also reality. So I am trying to let go of the fantasy that perfect vigilance will protect me from everything.

There is no perfect vigilance. There is just life. And life includes other people. Most of them are fine. Some are wonderful. A few are dangerous. That uncertainty does not feel fair. Nothing about this feels fair. Maybe that is where the anger lives. In the gap between what should have happened and what did.

I should have been safe. I was not. Simple sentence. Huge consequences. I think I used to worry that being angry meant I was stuck. I do not believe that anymore. You can move forward while still believing something was unforgivable. You can laugh and still be furious. You can build new things and still hate what somebody destroyed. You can have joy without making peace with injustice.

Those things coexist. We are annoyingly capable of holding several emotions at once. I can be happy about where my life is moving and angry about what happened to me. I can feel strong and wounded in the same hour. I can forgive myself without forgiving anyone else.

That one matters.

I have no interest in forcing forgiveness because somebody thinks it is spiritually efficient. Maybe forgiveness helps some people. Good. Take it. Use it. Frame it. I do not need it. What I need is freedom. Those are not the same thing.

Freedom means what happened does not decide what I do next. Freedom means the anger can exist without driving. Freedom means I do not spend every day negotiating with the past. I am getting closer to that. Not there. Closer. And maybe anger is not something I need to get rid of. Maybe I just need to know what it is for.

Mine says this mattered. Mine says I mattered. Mine says what happened was not acceptable. Mine says I will not make myself smaller to accommodate somebody else’s violence. I can live with that anger. I think it has earned a chair. Just not the whole damn house.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And anger finally sitting where it belongs.