Sam’s Journal of Survival

Anger Feels Dangerous

011426

This journal is fiction. The voice you’re reading is a character, not the author.

Anger Feels Dangerous

Today, I’m angry.

Not sad. Not tired. Angry.

I don’t usually let myself stay here for long. Anger feels dangerous, like it might spill into something I can’t control. But today it’s already here, and pretending it isn’t would be dishonest.

He ruined my life.

That feels stark on the page, but it’s true. He didn’t just take days or months or a sense of safety. He took possibility. He took ease. He took the version of me that didn’t have to think this hard about existing.

He took so much that I barely recognize who I’ve become.

I plan everything. I calculate risk. I move through the world like a problem to be solved. I’ve turned myself into something efficient and contained, a version of me that functions but doesn’t fully live.

Sometimes I feel like a machine programmed for survival.

He did that.

I didn’t choose this life. I didn’t choose to weigh every interaction, every invitation, every parking lot and hallway and moment of silence. I didn’t choose to be exhausted by nothing more than an ordinary day.

He made that choice for me.

What makes me angriest is how invisible the cost is. From the outside, my life looks intact. Successful. Controlled. People see competence and assume peace.

They don’t see what was taken.

He doesn’t get to see it either. He doesn’t have to live inside the damage he caused. I do.

That feels profoundly unfair.

I’ve worked hard to be reasonable. To understand trauma. To explain it calmly. To manage it responsibly. But today I don’t want to be reasonable. I want to acknowledge the truth without softening it.

He wrecked my life.

Not completely. Not beyond repair. But enough that everything I do now carries his fingerprints.

I hate that.

I hate that my anger has nowhere to go. There’s no confrontation that would fix this. No apology that would return what was lost. There’s just this quiet accounting, day after day.

Today, I’m letting myself name it.

This anger doesn’t make me broken. It makes me honest.

And honesty doesn’t resolve everything. But it does release something.

After this, I’m going to take a shower. I’m going to cry. I’m going to let some of this anger move through me instead of staying lodged where it hurts the most.

Maybe then I’ll feel better. For now, that has to be enough.