You are not allowed to be angry. So the anger lives somewhere else.
In this reflection we acknowledge the fire that cannot be shown.
You are angry. Not occasionally. Persistently. A low flame that flickers beneath everything. Sometimes it surges and you have to push it back down. Sometimes it goes quiet enough to forget. But it is always there. Waiting.
The anger makes sense. There is plenty to be angry about. Systems that were never designed to include you. Daily indignities that accumulate. The exhaustion of navigating spaces that treat your presence as unusual. The weight of being watched, assessed, found suspicious or exceptional or both at once.
But anger is not allowed. Not from you. Not when anger from people who look like you is coded as dangerous. Not when your tone is policed even when your words are reasonable. Not when the mere presence of your frustration confirms fears that were never fair in the first place.
So the anger goes quiet. Not because you chose calm. Because calm was required. Because visibility comes with conditions. Because you learned that showing what you feel makes things worse even when what you feel is completely justified.
Quiet rage still takes something. The energy of suppression. The effort of smiling when you want to scream. The discipline of choosing words carefully every time because careless words from you carry different weight than careless words from others.
The rage does not disappear because it cannot be shown. It stores. It compounds. It shows up in your body as tension, fatigue, the wear of carrying what cannot be released.
Finding places to let the anger exist is necessary. Not to act on it destructively. Just to acknowledge it. To say out loud that you are angry and why. To stop pretending you feel what you are supposed to feel instead of what you actually feel.
The anger is valid. It was always valid. The only thing that was not valid was a world that expected you to never have it.
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