Counting Until It Numbs

Anger.

I thought I knew it.

But no. I didn’t know it at all.

I didn’t know that I could be so angry at nothing and everything at the same time. I didn’t know that I could sit in a work meeting, smiling, while screaming on the inside. Or that I could be listening to my family at dinner and want to shut them all up, while still laughing at a joke someone just made.

But most of all, I didn’t know that while feeling all of this, I would turn on myself the hardest.

I know that not being able to express anger isn’t healthy. But nobody teaches you where to point anger at something you cannot see, hold, or speak to. I want to hurt the cells and particles I can’t see. I have never wanted to hurt anything — or anyone — intentionally before. That is new. And it’s frightening. Because anger is contagious. If you can feel this way about one thing, you can carry it into everything else. Being a “good citizen” or a well-functioning adult means you don’t. Or you learn to control it. But that control, that constant regulation also has a cost. It adds to the anger. It adds to the exhaustion.

It becomes a cycle.A constant storm.

So I take deeper breaths. I count to the number that numbs me. I work harder. I disappear into my corporate mind or my creative mind and keep pushing inward.

When do I come out for air? I don’t know.

What I’m learning about the life I’ve built is not that it lacks substance, but that I’ve built it to survive, not to be held. My safe space has always been me. Inward. Self-contained. Reliable.

And that realisation makes me angry too.

Because self-sufficiency is praised until the moment you actually need somewhere to land. When the storm changes direction and there is no deep end to retreat to — only yourself, treading water.

The anger doesn’t disappear then. It softens. It shifts. It turns into sadness.

Not because the life is shallow, but because even strong lives deserve shelter.