I am angrier than I allow myself to be

Dear Delyara, That may be the truest sentence I have written in a long time. Not loud anger. Not breaking things. Not dramatic confrontation. Buried anger. Domestic anger. Polite anger. The anger of being the one who notices first, remembers first, carries first, softens first, gives way first, goes without first, and then still feels guilty for wanting ten quiet minutes with nobody calling her name. I am angry about how much of my life has been spent being “understanding.” I am angry about how often women’s exhaustion gets romanticised as love. I am angry that I still make myself easier for rooms that have not earned that gentleness from me. I am angry that by evening I am too worn out to know where to put it properly, so it leaks into my tone at the wrong people or hardens inward into shame. The anger itself is not the problem. The silence around it is. Because when anger has nowhere clean to go, it starts turning against the person holding it. In my case, that person has been me.