You know what is really an awesome feeling? Getting angry.
Now I know that sounds silly. Technically, angry is anything but awesome feeling. It can feel overwhelming and like a loss of control. It can cause physical pain, and it can get us stuck in our thoughts. It can make us incredibly tense, and sad, and confused.
But that’s just what anger is. It’s an icky feeling. It’s not pleasant.
But allowing yourself to feel angry? That is what is awesome.
For pretty much the longest time, I tried to avoid feeling angry. If someone would hurt me, I would try to stifle it. Lock it away. Or I would figure out what I did wrong. After all, any time there is a problem in a relationship, it has to be the fault of both sides, right? Or I would turn it to hurt. That felt just as bad as anger, but it made me feel like I was taking the moral high ground. I could accept myself as being a person who felt hurt. But me being someone who felt anger? What right did I have?
And so since I tried to deny my anger, every time I would feel anger, it would consume me. I would analyze it, and fight it, and ignore it, and try to beat it out of me. All because for some reason, I didn’t feel okay as a person who got angry.
And it makes sense. Culture teaches girls that it isn’t okay to be angry. That good girls don’t feel that way. That’s it’s not a nice way to be.
But anger is a human emotion. It’s real. It exists for girls as well as boys, women as well as men.
And the crazy thing is, once you allow yourself to feel it, you can start to get over it. When we pretend it’s not there and we ignore its call, it can become destructive. But if we allow it and accept it and embrace it, we can actually finally let it go.
So these days when I feel angry, I try to sit with it. I try to allow myself the compassion to feel all the feelings planted in my soul. I try to accept them as a part of me. I allow myself to feel all of those big feelings that I allow everyone else to feel.
And then I realize it doesn’t feel so good, and I move on in an attempt to offer forgiveness.
And maybe that’s why ignoring anger feels so bad. If we can’t feel the anger, we can’t offer forgiveness. And to me, forgiveness is about the single most healing force on this planet.