I have more anger in me than anyone around me would guess from my voice

Dear Delyara, Because my anger does not come out loudly. It comes out domestically. In the speed of my tone. In how intolerable one more small request can suddenly feel by evening. In the way I need silence like medicine. In how quickly I can feel hard under the skin while still sounding polite. In the private rage that rises when I realise how much of my life gets spent carrying, translating, understanding, forgiving, organising, and making things easier for people who do not always even realise that’s what they are asking from me. I think women are trained so early to make anger socially acceptable that by adulthood it often reappears only as symptoms — fatigue, withdrawal, sharpness, numbness, guilt, headaches, distance, self-blame. I don’t think my anger is the problem. I think what it has had to become in order to survive in me is the problem.