The Day I Carried My Anger All Day | by chel writes | Oct, 2025

This morning, I woke up already tense. My jaws clenched, my shoulders rolled forward, my breath short. I had not had my breath short. I had no reason to feel this way initially, but I could sense it; something bubbling just below the surface of my skin. By the time I finally opened my phone and read the message that had enraged me so, it was all back. The thing that had troubled me yesterday. The thing I didn’t say. The thing I decided to “just let go.”

But I didn’t.

I kept it. I doubled over that anger and shoved it somewhere deep within me, promising myself I’d face it later. Except I never did.

So I did all that instead, dressed for the day as normal. I gritted my teeth so hard I wore them down to the enamel, splashed cold water on my face in a mad fizz, paced back and forth across my bedroom as if I was trying to escape from my anger. That didn’t help either. Rage followed me around like my shadow, dragging me down, strangling me.

By breakfast, I was quiet. Not the peaceful kind of quiet, but the cutting one — like glass. Husband had the decency to ask if I were alright, and I nodded to him in return and said, “I’m okay”. The easiest lie I can manage.

Anger is not necessarily in the state of being enraged. Occasionally, it looks like pretence, slamming dishes a little too hard or marching a little too fast. Occasionally, it looks like sitting at my desk, answering messages with politeness while, in my mind, anything but politeness is happening.

The thing was, I did not want to ruin the day. I was thinking to myself that it wasn’t worth it. That I should stay calm. Be mature. Be the bigger person. This is what I’d been taught my whole life: hold it in, don’t let yourself get so angry, don’t let other people enjoy the show of watching you lose your temper. So I didn’t.

But the longer it dragged on, the more I was paying the cost of everything being manipulated. It’s funny you don’t even know, and yet it’s choking you. I was carrying the weight, a burden which became heavier with each smile, each “no problem.”

By lunchtime, everything irritated me. The sounds outside, my sluggish computer, someone eating too loudly. It wasn’t them, naturally. It was me, working too hard to be fine.

Anger wants movement. It wants sound, air, space. But I gave it none of those things. I kept it trapped. It ricocheted within me like a caged echo, seeking fresh corners to conceal itself in.

When I went out, the world was too bright, too fast. People were talking, laughing, living. I wanted to join in, but the heat of my own anger kept me isolated. There’s a desolation to seething silently. You have people within your vicinity, but there isn’t anyone who can see the storm raging within.

I repeatedly replayed the same moment in my mind, thinking about what I wanted to say and what I should have responded with. I rehearsed conversations I would never have, writing scripts I would never perform. Every version ended the same: me, silent again.

By the afternoon, the anger started to shift. It wasn’t fiery anymore. It became something dull, like fatigue. I was tired, not only tired of what had occurred, but tired of my own reluctance to feel it. To hold anger all day is like holding your breath — before long, everything gets blurry.

I was aware of how my body was holding it. My shoulders curled inward, my chest felt heavy, and my hands trembled. I screamed to have it taken out, but that felt like too much effort. So I did what I always do: I pushed through it, typed through it, nodded through it, and smiled through it.

There was one instance when I saw myself in a glass window. I was calm, maybe even content. No one would have thought that I was still clenching my teeth over something I never said. Maybe that is the hardest thing; how easy it is to look fine when you are not.

When evening came, I thought it would be gone. I thought time would sweep it away, the way it always does. But it did not. It hung around, more subdued now, but it was still there. I knew no longer that the circumstances themselves were hurting me anymore, but my silence. My decision to carry it instead of speaking it.

I catch myself sometimes wondering why I find it so hard to be angry. Maybe it’s because I was taught that it’s impolite. Maybe it’s because somehow along the way, I realized that if I express how I feel, people back away. So, I make the conscious decision to keep the peace, even if that means fighting a war inside myself.

I wish I could say that by nightfall, I let it go. But I didn’t. I carried it into the evening like a bruise only visible to me. I prepared dinner, I saw something on TV, I smiled at a joke that wasn’t funny. My anger waited patiently and stubbornly beside me.

When I was able to go to bed at last, I could sense the tension of having worn it all day long. The pressure behind my eyes, the pang in my chest. I knew that trying to walk over anger never gets rid of it. It only teaches it to wait.

I started writing in my journal, trying to name it. Not justify it, just name it. That’s when I knew something was shifting. Writing it down didn’t fix anything, but it showed me I don’t have to solve every feeling — I can just let them exist. That I can just let my feelings be, even when they are messy and in the way.

I thought through all the other times I’d done this; carried around anger as a secret. All the smiles hiding resentment, all the words that were swallowed and became leaden in my throat. And how much lighter I would be if I just allowed myself to be angry, for one minute.

Maybe it’s not yelling or exploding. Maybe it’s honesty. Being brave enough to speak it, “that hurt me”, or “I didn’t like that”, without apologizing for having spoken it.

This evening, in the darkness, I am still able to sense the leftover anger humming within me. But it’s muffled now, less sharp. I believe because I finally looked at it instead of running away from it. I’m discovering that anger is not the opposite of peace. It’s on the path to arriving there.

There are days when you’re barely hanging on, when anger is the only thing you can control. I tell myself I’m protecting other people, or my reputation, or the balance. What I’m really protecting is the part of myself that refuses to be messy. The part that believes being easy to love means never being difficult.

But love, actual love, should make room for anger too. For truth. For imperfection.

So tonight, as I prepare for bed, I tell myself: You can be angry. You’re allowed. Something small, really, and one that tastes like the permission I’ve always needed.

When I turn off the light, the rage loses its grip. It is still there, but no longer something that I am gripping onto. It’s just something moving through.

Maybe that’s all healing is, learning how to have our feelings knock on the door without letting them unload their bags.

I’ll try to try again tomorrow. To speak a little sooner. To be a little braver. To stop holding so much inside.

Because life is too short to waste a single day being angry alone.