The Weight of What We Carry

For a long time, I didn’t think of myself as an angry person. Frustrated? Sure. Irritated? Occasionally. But anger? That felt like something that belonged to other people—louder people, reckless people, people who hadn’t mastered the art of keeping things together. I convinced myself I was past all that.

Turns out, anger doesn’t disappear just because you ignore it. It waits. It sinks into your muscles, stiffens your jaw, shapes the way you shrink yourself to keep the peace. It turns into exhaustion that no amount of sleep can fix. It hardens into quiet resentment, slipping out in sharp, unexpected ways.

When I finally stopped pushing it down, I realized my anger wasn’t just anger. It was grief. The kind that builds slowly—layer by layer—over years of staying quiet when I should have spoken up. Grief for the times I swallowed my pain because it was easier than acknowledging it. Grief for the younger version of me who tolerated what never should have been tolerated.

People like to talk about healing as if it’s a gentle unfolding, a soft moment of clarity. But real healing? It drags everything you buried right back to the surface. Not to punish you, but to remind you that it was never really gone. And that moving forward means facing it first.

For years, I thought if I let myself feel anger, it would consume me. That it meant I was failing, that I was weak, that I had lost control. But anger, when you stop running from it, is clarifying. It shows you the lines that should have never been crossed. It reminds you of what you deserved all along. It tells you the truth you spent years excusing.

Healing isn’t forcing yourself to be at peace with everything. Some things are worth getting angry over. Not so you can hold onto that anger forever, but so you can finally stop carrying what was never yours to hold in the first place.

If something inside you feels heavy, you don’t have to hold it forever. But you do have to hold it long enough to understand it. And when you’re ready, you get to put it down and walk forward, lighter than before.