I Have Felt Something Darker Than Anger

Dear Delyara, I don’t like admitting that hate has lived in me. Not the theatrical version. Not something explosive. Something colder than that. The kind that grows in silence when pain has nowhere healthy to go. The kind that forms around humiliation and powerlessness and years of not being able to answer back properly. I am not proud of it. But pretending I have only ever felt noble things would be another kind of dishonesty.