My anger gets tidier before it gets honest

Dear Delyara, That’s one of the things that worries me about myself. I don’t always express anger directly. I organize it. I make it cleaner, more rational, more socially acceptable, more measured. I turn the heat into structure. By the time it leaves me, it often sounds reasonable enough that no one sees the wound under it, and maybe that’s part of why I’ve done it for so long. But tidy anger is still anger. It still has a body. It still leaves residue. It still tells the truth, even if in a flatter voice. I think I’ve spent years refining my anger into something no one would have to respond to properly. And that has cost me more than I know how to calculate.